LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 









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Looking Forward 



FOR YOUNG MEN 



THEIR INTEREST AND SUCCESS 



BV y 

REV. GEORGE SOIXER WEAVER, D.D. 




NEW YORK 

FOWLER & WELLS CO. 

775 Broadway 
1S91 



Copyright, 1890, 
FOWLER & WELLS COMPANY, 



PREFACE 



In the autumn of 1849, forty years ago, the 
author of this little volume wrote, at the sugges- 
tion of some young men he was teaching, a series 
of lectures which was published by Fowler & 
"Wells in 1850, entitled Mental Science. In the 
summer previous, he wrote and gave as Sunday 
afternoon discourses to the young people of his 
congregation, a series of discourses which was 
published two years later by the same firm, under 
the title of Hopes and Helps for the Young. 
Now, in 1889, he writes for the young again, to be 
read by the children and grandchildren of those 
who read his first books, and to be published by 
the same firm. A profitable psychological study 
may be had by comparing this volume with those 
written forty years earlier. 

The young we have always with us, and work 
for them will always be in order. The world's 



4 PREFACE, 

improvement must be made largely through them. 
They are the readiest to be instructed, the most 
susceptible to ennobling influences, and least hin- 
dered by prepossessions and prejudices. The 
hopes of the ages are in them, and those who are 
in sympathy with them can help humanity 
through them. The author acknowledges with 
pleasure that of all he has done in a many-sided 
life, that which he has done for the young has 
given him the best satisfaction. They have helped 
him while he has endeavored to help them. They 
have renewed his youth and given him inspira- 
tion, and now he joins with them to give a grand 
exit to the greatest century the world has seen. 
They are to be leaders in the great uplifts of 
the society that are to be. All hail to them 
and the centuries for which they are preparing. 
In the hope of joining with them to keep stej) 
to the music of human improvement and joy, the 
author asks once again to be admitted to their 
company and confidence. 

G. S. W. 

East Providexce, R. I., October, 1890. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Young Man and His Patrimony, ... 7 

CHAPTER II. 
The Young Man and His Friends, .... 19 

CHAPTER III. 

The Needed Friends and How to Get and Keep Them, 34 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Young Man and His Business, .... 45 

CHAPTER V. 
Business and Something More, 60 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Young Man and His Politics, .... 73 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Young Man and His Politics No. 2, . 85 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Young Man and His Money, .... 98 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

PAGE 

The Young Man and His Time, .... 112 

CHAPTER X. 
The Young Man and His Habits, .... 126 

CHAPTER XL 

The Young Man and His Pleasures, .... 141 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Young Man and His Ambitions; . . . 155 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Young Man and His Reading, .... 170 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The Young Man and His Hopes, .... 183 

CHAPTER XV. 
The Young Man and His Home, . . . . 196 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Young Man and His Religion, . . . . 207 



LOOKING FORWARD 

FOE YOUNG MEK 



CHAPTER I. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS PATRIMONY. 

The young man and his patrimony open for 
the first chapter of this volume two themes of 
large interest. There is no individual needier, or 
worthier of the best wisdom that can be given 
him, than the young man, because he is always 
an important element of society, the prospect and 
promise of the future, and a large factor in the 
hope of the world. A benefit to him is equally a 
benefit to the young woman who is to share with 
him his patrimony. Much is being done for her 
in these days, in the many ways in which her in- 
terests are cared for; and perhaps in no way can 
she be more effectually served than in what may 
be done to ennoble her coming companion. The 
greatest benefit to a woman is a worthy and suit- 



8 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

able husband ; so the greatest benefit to woman- 
kind is to enrich the world with genuine men. 

The young man, what is he ? A new ship 
freighting for a voyage of the world — a new 
machine fitting for its place in the world's great 
factory — a new institution organizing to compete 
for enterprise and success in the world's affairs, 
a new human being equipping for the battle of 
life to win victory, or defeat according to his con- 
duct of the battle. Human life is a battle, and 
every man is a soldier enlisted for the war. He 
cannot flee the ranks, nor employ a substitute, 
nor turn back from the contest except at the 
peril of defeat and disgrace. He is to make of 
life a well -fought battle, or a shameful rout. The 
choice is before him, and he is to take it deliber- 
ately, with his eyes open, in his right mind, ac- 
cepting the responsibility and consequences. 

If life is a battle and every man a soldier, he is 
drafted, not volunteered. He did not plan the 
campaign of human life, nor arrange the necessity 
of soldiership, nor have any voice in the question 
whether he would have a part in it or not. Life 
is not of our making. The first we know of it we 
have it. It is forced upon us. We live before 
we know it. Living is Providential —the gift of 
others and not our choice. Something, therefore, 
is back of us. Something gave us being and 
drafted us into the inevitable . campaign of life, 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS PATRIMONY. 9 

and that same something holds us to soldierly 
duty and to loyal living at the peril of defeat. 
Something of life is in our hands, but much of it 
is shaped for us, and the whole of it is under a 
Superintendency that watches its processes and 
estimates its results, quite differently often from 
what we do. It is important that we recognize at 
the outset the fact that "there is back of us and 
over us and in us," Something not of ourselves 
that we must obey, Something that makes in- 
telligent demands upon us and holds us to ac- 
countability and duty. We do not make our 
duties, at any rate, only a part of them. For the 
most part, we are put into our places and our 
duties are forced upon us, even as is life itself. 
The necessities, discipline, and laws of life we did 
not make, but the tactics, conduct, and drill of 
life are largely in our own hands ; yet there is so 
much of it preordered, or directed by an invisible 
Hand, that we can scarcely call it our own. It 
seems largely to be given to be lived for the Giver. 
With life, are given the laws of its being, the 
powers of mind and body that come with it, the 
stirring incentives of love and honor and duty 
that move us to action, the world and its rich 
opportunities for growth and enjoyment, country, 
home and friends and all that come with them to 
invite to the feasts of honor and pleasure. All 
these and more than can be catalogued are the 



10 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

gifts of a paternal Hand to every young man. 
Indeed, we are born to a sjjlendid patrimony, an 
estate of uncounted wealth. Body, mind, world, 
country, society, relationships, institutions, the 
universe about us, the laws within us, God over 
us, the immortality that we trust is before us, 
constitute the estate we have inherited. Is not 
all this worth living for, to use and honor with a 
splendid service? Does not such a patrimony in- 
dicate the wealth, dignity and goodness of the 
paternal Giver? and also the capacity and worth 
of the untried mind and heart that has been 
favored with such a rich estate? No youth has 
any right to count himself poor who is born to 
such a patrimony. No youth should feel orphan- 
ized whose Father has enriched him with such 
wealth. No one should feel lonely, or discouraged 
in the midst of such company and such abun- 
dance. At the very start life opens to the grand- 
est opportunities. Surely its meaning must be 
sublime and its progress and outcome ought to be 
honorable. 

This estate is twofold. Part of it is in the 
young man himself; part of it is outside of 
him; and the value of each is enhanced by the 
other. 

And what is the part of the estate within him- 
self? This too consists of two parts, his body and 
mincL And they enhance each other's value. 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS PATRIMONY. 11 

Body and mind make up the man of this world, 
body and mind in a terrestrial partnership. Body 
and mind are enlisted together for the campaign 
of time. Body and mind do life's work in mutual 
dependence and helpfulness. Body and mind in 
their subtle and marvellous union constitute the 
personal estate which each young man receives 
from the Hand that wrought so wondrously the 
powers of Ms being. And what a being! Who 
can estimate properly the capacity for action, and 
honor, of the young man. and the grand signifi- 
cance of the career that is before him? What 
beauty and power of body ! What elasticity of 
muscle! What strength and toughness of sinew! 
What hardness of bone, suppleness of action, and 
tenacity of life! What keenness of sense, what 
strength, what ability to endure! What robust- 
ness of health, what vigor of constitution! What 
richness of blood ! What vital forces animate it 
through and through ! What nerves of sensibility 
thread all its parts! Xo less a thing of power 
than of beauty ; no less a thing of wonder than of 
art ; no less a marvel than a model of mechanism ! 
The body of youth, it is indeed ''fearfully and 
wonderfully made." 

And this marvellous form of magnetic matter 
— this animated Apollo, this instrument of a 
thousand strings and more uses is a gift to every 
voimo' man from its Maker — a sift conferred with- 



12 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEtf. 

out the asking — a gift which in its very excellence 
puts it at the head of created things. 

And yet wonderful and valuable as is this body, 
it is but the least part of that inestimable per- 
sonal patrimony which the young man receives at 
his enlistment into life's campaign; for into this 
body is put a power of mind — a capacity for in- 
telligence, affection, and honor that allies him 
with the Divine, that gives him the command of 
all earthly things — the dominion of the animated 
world. This body is charged with mind to rea- 
son, command, and execute, to use all material 
things for its benefit and develop society, char- 
acter, manhood. It is mind that makes the man. 
Beautiful, nimble, powerful as is the body, it is 
a toy or tyrant without the mind to control 
it to noble ends. It is the mind that gives the 
body value and dignity. It is the mind that en- 
riches life, that gives the charm of home and 
honor to noble public service. The mind is the 
man — the thinker, inventor, mechanic, artist, 
scholar, statesman, preacher. It is the mind that 
holds the wealth and power of life. Body and 
mind joined in a this-world partnership to pro- 
mote the great ends of life, are the personal patri- 
mony which every youth receives with which to 
begin life. And is this all? No; for a sphere of 
action, a world in which to live and the hope of an 
immortal one to come with it to give opportunity 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS PATRIMOXY. 13 

as grand as may be desired. This is the young 
man's outfit for life. 

But this is not all ; for man has the capacity 
to cooperate with his kind for mutual enjoyment 
and benefit, and thus produce home, society, 
country, and all the fine enrichment of life that 
comes from them. By joining hand with hand 
and mind with mind in great numbers, the mar- 
vels of society grow up around him, to offer him 
their multiform advantages. This power of co- 
operation is one of the efficient sources of human 
greatness and enjoyment. If each man had to 
live and work alone, had to use his mind and body 
all for himself and by himself, could call in no 
help from his kind, could add no power to his 
own, could not multiply himself by union with 
others like him, how insignificant he would be in 
comparison with what he now is. He would be 
a Samson shorn of his locks. The linking power 
that makes long chains of humanity, the weaving 
power that makes great webs of our kind, the 
multiplying power that combines vast numbers 
of men, are what make society and all its marvel- 
lous possibilities of intelligence, usefulness and 
greatness. The parent cooperates with the child 
to grow a man or woman. The teacher cooperates 
with the pupil to make the scholar. The builder 
cooperates with the man needing a house in its 
production. The tailor cooperates with the man 



14 LOOKING FORWARD FOR Y017XG MEH. 

needing garments to clothe him. The merchant co- 
operates with his customers to get his goods into 
use. The banker cooperates with those needing 
his help. The author cooperates with his pub- 
lisher and readers to mingle his thoughts with 
theirs. The preacher cooperates with those hun- 
gry for the bread of spiritual life. So it is all the 
way around in this great combination which we 
call society. Cooperation is its law, which is to 
be carried out more and more perfectly till it 
shall come to be full of mutuality and helpful- 
ness. Men have cooperated in war, and will for 
some time to come. But its terrible destructive- 
ness and folly will by and bye teach them better? 
when they have combined to learn the lessons of 
peace. Then they will cooperate in arbitration to 
settle their difficulties. Men have combined in 
many forms of iniquity and do still, but the moral 
light of the better combinations of men, and the 
evils of iniquity becoming more and more appar- 
ent are teaching them that the true cooperation 
is in things virtuous and useful. This great law 
is working the marvels of social advancement in 
the great world into which the young man is born 
to his patrimony. 

The spring of this wide cooperation is friend- 
sliijj, not selfishness as some have said. Friend- 
ship is a part of the human mind and a strong 
part. Human nature is intensely social. To be 



THE YOUNG MAtf AHD HIS PATRIMONY. 15 

deprived of fellow-intercourse is held as a great 
evil. "We would hardly call one a man in whose 
heart there beats no throb of friendship. W"e 
would not want for a neighbor the man who re- 
sponds not to the kinship of humanity. We 
would prefer not to have even the acquaintance 
of the man who is nobody's friend. This linking 
quality, this binding sentiment which makes all 
the world akin, is as strongly dominant in young 
men as in any class of humanity. Though it 
sometimes operates for evil when it links them 
with evil associates, it is one of the hooks to which 
the wires of good influences are to be hitched, one 
of the storage batteries which holds the magnet- 
ism of the best things. This ground principle of 
friendship out of which grow the infinite affilia- 
tions and cooperations of humanity is a part of 
the young man's patrimony. It links him to hu. 
inanity, and is the subtle element which makes 
possible to him a clear knowledge of his fellow- 
men. It is charged with the insight of human 
nature and is full of the amenities which make 
agreeable our human intercourse. This is a gift 
of the Infinite Love. 

Now, there are some practical things to be de- 
duced from these considerations, which are help- 
ful to the young man in enabling him to adjust 
himself properly to the life-work upon which he 
has entered. In the first place, he is in friendly 



16 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

relations with his fellow-men. There is lionor in 
friendship, and that honor will not permit a slight 
or forgetfulness of friends. 

There is justice too in friendship which recog- 
nizes the worth and benefit of friends and does 
not fail to render meet acknowledgments for 
favors. It makes full returns. 

Then there is gratitude in friendship, that feels 
obligations, and expresses in words and acts its 
reciprocal esteem. 

Now, keeping these good principles in mind 
which every young man means to live by in his 
faithfulness to his friends, how ought every one 
to feel toward his first, great, Supreme Friend 
from whom he has received his great patrimony? 
What is due, according to these just principles, to 
the Infinite Love for these inestimable favors? 

As a matter of honor, how should a young man 
begin and conduct his life in relation to the 
Friend of all friends? Will neglect of his just 
requirements, profanity of his name, denial of his 
authority, repudiation of his law, resistance of his 
spirit, opposition to his righteous rule, cancel the 
debt of honor to him with which every young 
man starts in life? Every young man would de- 
spise himself if he should bandy his mother's 
name in joke or ribaldry, or if he should forget 
to remember with esteem and tenderness her toils 
and good offices in his behalf. We all feel that 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS PATRIMONY. 17 

tliere should be botli honor and principle in friend- 
ship, and that they apply as well to the Unseen 
Friend as to any in the flesh. He who is unjust 
with God cherishes the principle which may make 
him unjust with men. Ingratitude to the Great 
Giver of good is likely to be the root of ingrati- 
tude to every giver of good. Falsity in our rela- 
tion to the Divine goodness may be the seed of 
falsity in relation to all good actions. Infidelity 
to God may be the germ of infidelity to man. 
Just here is a principle of the utmost importance 
to young men. Too many young men think they 
can jest about God, and coquette with infidel no- 
tions and not be harmed in moral character or 
life. This is a sad mistake; for just in this is the 
beginning of irreverence and moral debasement. 

The friendship of young men is beautiful, and 
it enters largely into their character and lives. 
And nothing is more important than that it shall 
be pure. And to have it pure and influential, 
nothing contributes more than genuine gratitude 
to God for the many and grand gifts of his wis- 
dom and love. There is nothing manly in irrelig- 
iousness, but always something promotive of char- 
acter in sincere reverence and gratitude. 

The conclusion, therefore, is forced upon us that 
a debt of reverent and grateful obligation rests 
upon the young man who receives his patrimony 
of body, mind and world of men and things, from 



18 L00K1KG FORWARD f OR YOtTtfG MEH. 

the Infinite Giver of all good, and that a rightful 
recognition of this obligation is the fountain of 
both genuine morality and religion. 

It is evident that the chief part of his patrimony 
is himself. How he should hold it, what do with 
it, what advantages ought to accrue to him from 
it, and what service it should be to others, are 
points which will be somewhat considered in the 
succeeding chapters. 



The youxg max axd his friexds. 19 



CHAPTER II. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS FRIENDS. 

In introducing this subject, immensely impor- 
tant to young life, it may be well to consider, 
first, what view of life shall be taken, whether 
hopeful or dismal, whether manly or brutal, 
whether it shall have an upward or a downward 
look, an upward or a downward grade. The ten- 
dency — the grade of life will show itself as clearly 
in its friends as in any other way. " Birds of a 
feather flock together." A man is as well known 
by the company he keeps as by the words he 
speaks, or acts he does. 

The start in life is important ; it gives direction, 
set, tendency, the shaping influence. To start 
with base views of life is to set the impulses, am- 
bitions, desires, to low aims, and put the social 
nature at the same grade. To start with high 
views of life, is to give aspiration to all the ener- 
gies and to stimulate a craving for friends and 
associates who are moved with similar uplooking 
impulses. As the rifle points, so goes the ball. 
As the flrst step directs, so follow the succeeding 
steps. The start is immensely important. To 



20 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEtf. ' 

» 

start right is to get the impulse and push of all 
one's energies to bear him on and up, and to bring 
to his aid friends who will join their forces to 
his. To start wrong is to put one's whole nature 
behind him to bear him down and to draw other 
similar natures to aid in the downward move- 
ment. To start with idlers, vagrants, drinkers, 
gamblers, and learn hrst their low notions of life 
and what it is for and how to be conducted, he 
gets their bent and impulses in himself and the 
heavy weight of their coarseness and brutality 
added to bear him down their way. He not only 
gets inoculated with their evil, but he gets them 
for friends who prove a still heavier weight of 
evil. If he starts with the pure and fair-minded 
who see life a good opening for all good aims and 
enterprises, and makes them his friends, his course 
at once takes direction from his start and is borne 
on by all there is in him and them to press him 
forward. He adds his friends to himself to give 
him success. Surely the start in life is vital and 
tells mightily upon the whole succeeding career. 
If the start is wrong, the first lessons will be 
wrong and they must be unlearned, or the whole 
following life will be wrong. To unlearn is harder 
than to learn ; to turn back is harder than to go 
forward. To start wrong is worse than not to 
start at all. "Be sure you are right, then go 
ahead." Therefore, the first thing is to start right. 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS FRIENDS. 21 

But we do not get our first start alone. We are 
linked with others. Some friend aids us, gives 
the direction, furnishes the force that starts us on. 
This first friend is one of the most important we 
ever have. The first friend is a great help, or 
hurt. If the first friend puts poison into the cup 
of our life, who will take it out? If the first 
friend gives a wrong direction to our easily di- 
rected steps, who will turn them back to the right? 
If the first friend gives us false views of what 
we are in the world for, who will correct them? 
The hand of the first friend is on the rudder 
of a new ship. The influence of the first friend 
is a mightily telling one. The young man does 
not choose his first friend. That friend is of tenest 
a mother. But mothers too often are not wise, 
too often are weak and unequal to the great 
task of giving wise direction to the lives that 
come into their hands. But, be it a mother, or 
some one else, that friend puts more into the new 
life than any other. In a silent, yet effectual way 
that friend becomes the feather's weight that 
turns the scale. 

At this early hour in the young life, how happy 
if a cheerful spirit, a sunny temper, a high-toned 
view of life and its great aims and work, shall im- 
press themselves upon the facile young mind and 
quicken it with their love of bright and generous 
things. There is far more in first impressions 



22 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

than many people think. They are seeds of great 
things to come. "Just as the twig is bent the 
tree's inclined " is a truth so important that it has 
become almost scripture in the philosophic mind. 

This world into which the young mind opens is 
one of beauty and grandeur — a world of sunshine 
and flowers, of buds and fruits, of little seeds and 
great growths, of oceans from little fountains, of 
empires from trifling beginnings, of giants from 
helpless babes; it is a world of work and rest, of 
duty and pleasure, of society and solitude, of 
change and stability, of varitey and sameness, 
of common and rare things, of many employments 
and rich opportunities, all affording rich instruc- 
tion to the teachable mind, profitable enjoyment 
to the virtuous heart, and grand success to the 
soul keyed to the many- toned music of its har- 
monious whole. How happy if the young man's 
first friend shall put him into early harmony with 
the spirit and meaning of this grand and many- 
sided world, all of whose sides reflect like a dia- 
mond the light of the great universe about it. 

So the first friend cannot do better than to in- 
spire in the young mind hopeful and courageous 
views of the life before it. Life is not to be 
dreaded but welcomed. A good life is often half 
made by getting a happy view of its good uses to 
begin Avith. Fortunate is a young man whose 
first friends so shape his life that it shall get & 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS FRIENDS. 23 

good start without being poisoned with evil, or 
turned into downward ways. These friends are 
parents, brothers and sisters, schoolmates and as- 
sociates and such as are truly helpful in their in- 
fluence. 

How many a parent, teacher, minister, friend, 
has given the timely word or influence which has 
early won the young heart to the best things and 
made it the planting ground of all good princi- 
ples ! These first friends are often mighty friends 
in the power of good influence, to whom is due 
more in the making of great and good men, than 
to any later friends. Great men are oftener made 
great by what influences them before than after 
twenty-one. Most true men get the set toward 
true manliness in boyhood and get it by the true 
friends of that early period. It is hard to 
straighten the bent twig, hard to turn from his 
misdirected course the impetuous youth. Those 
who early train the young mind have the best 
chance of putting it into wisdom's ways. Un- 
speakably important are the earliest friends of 
men. They are not of their own choosing, but 
they prove their friendliness by the good they do. 
Their work in the young man, he must accept or 
reject, when his mind matures enough for per- 
sonal judgment upon it. The time comes and 
comes pretty early, when he begins to be his own 
man, begins to decide on the right and wrong of 



24 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN". 

conduct, begins to form opinions, estimate charac- 
ters and determine who shall be his friends. This 
is a critical time and often shapes all that follows 
it. If now his first friends shall have so helped 
him, or his own inclinations so direct him that he 
chooses wisely so that he gets help and not hin- 
drance from them, he has made a good beginning. 
Just here he may w T ell consider before he acts. 
The choice of friends is hardly second in impor- 
tance to any other choice he has to make. Every 
young man must have friends, but who and what 
they shall be are as important as any questions 
he has to settle. The old saying that a man is 
known by the company he keeps, indicates how 
his reputation is to be affected by his friends. It 
is equally true that a man is made in part by his 
friends. He accejots something of their opinions, 
conforms somewhat to their principles, is won 
somewhat to their habits and takes on something 
of their characters. To have a friend is to go part 
way to him and subject ourselves to his influence. 
We do not have friends to resist them, but to 
welcome them to confidence and consideration, 
and therefore to influence in our lives. If our 
friend is cheerful, he makes us more so than we 
should be without him ; if he is honest he braces 
up our integrity; if he is well bred, he helps our 
manners ; if he is good-tempered, he benefits our 
disposition ; but if he is the opposite of all these 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS FRIENDS. 2o 

in these particulars lie is harmful to us. If he is 
profane he will not improve our sj>eeck, nor our 
taste for good language ; if he is skeptical he will 
not help our faith; if he is coarse he will not 
polish our manners ; if he is selfish and mean he 
will weaken our moral force. We ought to have 
friends for the good they will do us, not for any 
evil we may get from them. We are foolish if 
we accexit as friends those who have the small- 
pox or any contagious disease. Evil is contagious, 
and to choose for friends those who are subject to 
it, is to choose it. We do not, therefore, want to 
cast our pearls before the swine of our friends; 
indeed we do not want for friends those who keep 
swine. We do not want to lean on such faulty 
supports. If we ride in a defective carriage, we 
may expect a break-down. If we drive a balky 
horse we may stop just when we want to go on. 
Defective friends are frail carriages, are balky 
horses. We do not have friends for dangers, or 
burdens, but for benefits. No young man can 
afford to have friends who would bring him bad 
associates, show him the way to bad places, or 
familiarize him with bad principles. He cannot 
afford to have friends with bad manners, much 
less with bad characters, or speech, or habits. 
Such friends are a load he would better not try 
to carry. He may give to paupers, and tell the 
wicked to repent, but he would better not make 



26 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

up the list of his friends from these classes. If 
he does not accept the bad in the characters or 
habits of his friends, they will familiarize him 
with it, make him tolerant of it, and bring him 
down to a level with it. 

To say the least his chosen friends should be 
as good as himself, of as good blood, intelligence, 
character, habits and aim in life. There is neither 
wisdom nor good taste in going down to get 
friends. Friendship is winning and if its objects 
are below us, it is likely to take us down to them. 

And friendship is often costly ', especially when 
it is not wisely formed. If for an unwise friend- 
ship, we take on as a penalty, a habit that shall 
make us its slave for life, that shall pilfer money 
from our pockets every day, that shall unnerve 
our muscles, stupefy our brains, injure our health, 
unsteady our purposes and unman our characters, 
it is at a fearful cost. How do young men learn 
the use of tobacco? That plant is offensive to 
everything that lives, except the tobacco worm. 
It nauseates and poisons every natural organism 
that attempts to use it, either to smoke, chew, or 
snuff. It can be borne only after a hard breaking 
in— a persevering discipline — a kind of martyr- 
dom. And when one is broken in so thoroughly 
as to get the tobacco habit, he is ever after taxed 
a number of cents a day to keep it up, making a 
bill of several thousand dollars in a life- time — a 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS FRIENDS. 27 

handsome little competency for a moderate fam- 
ily, is steadily reduced in health and strength and 
is made filthy and disagreeable to all people of 
natural senses and delicate tastes. No one breaks 
himself in to this habit of his own accord and 
all by himself. He submits to the hard ordeal 
through the influence of friends. It is a social 
habit, one of the penalties of perverted friendship, 
and costly in many ways. The wide prevalence 
of the tobacco habit is a heavy weight on our 
civilization, as well as an unspeakable disagree- 
ableness 

How does the young man learn to drink? Here 
is an evil of immense magnitude — largely a man's 
evil habit — not woman's, which is so destructive 
that manhood goes rapidly down before it, that 
character pales in its presence, that gentility and 
respectability yield to as paper to the flame, that 
talent and learning are not proof against, that 
political parties serve as slaves, and legislatures 
and congresses take ofl their hats and manhood 
to, that even not a few churches are silent before, 
and which throttles the daily press of all coun- 
tries — an evil that is the laboring man's greatest 
enemy, the seed of immense vice and crime, the 
peril of the home, the heartache of woman, which 
carries down to annual death, or a worse destruc- 
tion, a quarter of million of men. Cost! Who 
can tell its cost in money, character, grief and 



28 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEK. 

men? And yet a new army of yonng men every 
year learn to drink. They kee]? the army full 
that is marching down the drunken decline. Sad 
and awful procession, trampling under foot that 
manhood made in the Divine image. Young men 
learn to fill the deluded ranks at the wine cup and 
beer mug, led there by the friends they have 
chosen to be deluded by. This too is a social 
evil. There is stimulation, delusion, mirth and 
frenzy in it. The young learn the habit of their 
older friends, then join together in the dementing 
guzzle. A kind of immoral fatality, like that of 
idolatry, slavery, bigamy in the olden times, has 
made the drink dementation popular and given 
it its financial, political and social foothold of 
men. Its root is more in friendship than any- 
where else, the perversion, the misuse, the degrada- 
tion of friendship. Young friends do not mean 
to go to evil when they drink together, but they 
do none the less cherish the great iniquity and 
prostitute friendship to the ruin of men. No boy 
starts out from his home for the saloon the first 
time alone. Some friend who has learned the 
w r ay of some other friend must lead him. It is 
the supposed friendship in the saloon that makes 
\ it enticing. Divide it into stalls and make every 
man drink alone ; forbid sociability ; separate 
friends the moment they enter the door and let 
nothing but drink be the attraction and young 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS FRIENDS. 29 

men would not go there. There is nothing entic- 
ing in drink at the beginning. The habit has to 
be formed by effort and practice. At length the 
stimulation leads on the appetite to contribute to 
the craze and the whole man becomes other than 
himself — an alcoholic victim, a pitiable wretch 
who has joined the army that is destroying our 
civilization. JSTo greater mistake can any young 
man make than to learn to tipple. The only safe 
way is to taste not, touch not, handle not the in- 
toxicating draught. Even in its mildest form it 
is the beginning of evil. It deludes when it says 
there is no harm in a little. The little is the be- 
ginning of the whole evil. The great waste, the 
awful desolation of the drunken ruin, begins in 
the little. Say no at once to any friendly sugges- 
tion to drink. There is perfect safety in perfect 
abstinence. 

Other evil courses are entered in much the 
same way by the enticement of friends. ISTo boy 
takes up rowdyism and low life of his own accord. 
The suggestion comes from his friendly relation 
with other boys, and usually some older boy leads 
the way. No boy sits down by himself and de- 
liberately plans mischief which he proposes to 
execute alone. It was never known that a college 
boy got up and executed a college prank all by 
himself. Pranks, mischiefs, scandals, evil habits 
and ways come very largely from unwise friend- 



30 lookihg Forward for y5uh$ kfitf. 

ships, or friendsliips unwisely conducted. Mis- 
fortunes, loss of character, property, place and 
reputation, are often due to friends over-trusted. 
It is true that there are few good things more 
dangerous and costly than friendship. It is the 
open door to a multitude of misfortunes. Unwise 
friendship has ruined more young men than any 
other one thing. It is the gilded, slippery incline 
that glides gently down to unexpected woes. And 
it is not because friendship is bad ; for in itself it 
is not bad, but good. Nearly all evil is perverted 
good. It is only when it is unwise that it leads 
to bad results. 

Friendship in itself is the very sunshine of life. 
It gives us the daisies and buttercups that bloom 
by our common pathways and makes warm, fra- 
grant and songful the otherwise acrid atmosphere 
of necessity and duty. We could not live with- 
out friends. We need not. Only be wise in the 
choice of friends and we are safe — aye, and more 
than safe ; for while it is true that bad friends are 
burdens and stumbling-blocks, it is equally true 
that good ones are helps. They are not only com- 
forts and joys, but solid supports to our plans and 
purposes, real forces added to our strength. So- 
ciety is possible only on the basis of genuine friend- 
ship. Families, schools, churches, hold together 
chiefly by the cement of friendship. Business 
rests on it not a little ; for how much it aids the 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS FRIEXDS. 3l 

merchant to sell Ms goods, the physician to get 
and hold his patients, the mechanic to make his 
work acceptable, the banker to hold the confidence 
of his customers, and every business man to get 
on well with those with whom he deals. The man 
without friends in a community has a poor busi- 
ness prospect there. It is true there is business 
and success in friends. They are the rounds in 
the ladder of success. The good trades, callings 
and professions are friendly helps to each other. 
Politicians help one another and make heavy drafts 
on personal friendships in their partisan plans. 
Community makes a division of labor that its 
work may be done cheaper and better, on the prin- 
ciple of friendly relationship. The different vo- 
cations cooperate for mutual benefit, because in 
trustful friendship they confide in one another. 
Our civilization has grown up on the basis of 
friendship — helping one another in mutual confi- 
dence. And on this basis it must rid itself of its 
great evils, must beat its swords into ploughshares 
and learn war no more. The nations are friendly 
and must learn to be more so, that they may make 
a freer exchange of benefits and be mutual aids 
in their great governmental and social offices. 

So it is clear that the young man should have 
friends. The instinct of his nature to confide in 
those nearest to him and link his interests with 
them, is right. He should not be an iceberg chill- 



32 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

ing everybody that comes near him; nor a recluse 
shut up from a friendly world; nor a porcupine 
sticking quills into everybody that comes near 
enough to him. It should be one aim of his life 
to make friends and hold them. It should even 
be a part of his business. One has scarcely a right 
to live in this world without being friendly and 
making friends. But then, one need not be a 
sponge and imbibe muddy water just as readily 
as clear. One need not forget that people are dif- 
ferent, and some of them will harm us with their 
friendships. One need not go into evil places 
hunting friends, nor follow friends into dark and 
dangerous ways. One need not lay aside his judg- 
ment, nor his moral sense, nor his taste, nor his 
respect for a good name, when he chooses his 
friends, nor in his association with them. In 
nothing does he want these good qualities more 
than in his friendships. A man is known by his 
friends and he is influenced by them, and made 
like them. A man goes up or down according to 
the help, or hindrance he gets from his companions. 
All important is it, therefore, to have the right 
kind of friends — wholesome friends, good-man- 
nered friends, good-principled friends, good-speak- 
ing friends. All important is it too, that we keep 
level-headed, pure-hearted, fair-dealing in our 
friendships. 
The young man who starts in life with such first 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS FRIENDS. 38 

friends, and such of his own choosing, has in one 
respect made the best kind of a start, and other 
needful things being equal to these, is almost sure 
of a successful, honorable and happy life. 
3 



34 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE NEEDED EKIENDS AND HOW TO GET AND 
KEEP THEM. 

In the last chapter, the start in life, its relation 
to others, the world in which it is lived, the first 
friend, the chosen friends, their influence, costli- 
ness, helpfulness, as well as their need, were some- 
what considered. But the general subject would 
be left in a too crude and external shape, unless 
another chapter were added which should go more 
to the root of the matter and consider the more 
inward things which relate to character and man- 
hood. 

The proposition will not be disputed that the 
young man must have friends — not any kind of 
friends, that like burrs may happen to stick to 
him, or like leeches may want to suck his blood, 
but good friends who have not only the quality of 
adhesiveness, but the strength and soul of helpful- 
ness and honor. Now the question is, how to get 
them? This is vital. Every young man wants 
many things that he does not quite see how to 
get. He wants money and much of it, but how 



THE DEEDED FKIENDS. 35 

to get it is another tiling. He wants honorable 
position, bnt abont its attainment he is not so clear. 
He wants success, bnt the way to it is the problem 
he is anxious to have solved. So he wants friends, 
one of the best helps to attain these other much- 
coveted things and without which they cannot be 
attained, and how to get the?n, is the matter he 
is now invited to consider. 

And to begin with, he should not be discouraged 
with the idea that they are hard to get. All the 
best things have been had by others, and are still 
to be had on their own terms. The kind of friends 
he most needs are not shy, or evasive, or unap- 
proachable. They are as solicitous to come to him 
as he is to have them. They will not keep away 
from him, nor hedge up his way to them. He is 
ever to them an object of abiding interest, and 
they wait for the opportunity to serve him. Suc- 
cess may be hard to attain; honorable position 
may be far off and high up ; wealth may be wholly 
out of his reach ; but good friends are at hand for 
every young man who will show himself worthy 
of them. If he is poor he can get them; if he is 
without learning he can get them ; if he is of hum- 
ble parentage he can get them ; though deformed, 
and personally unattractive he can get them. 
They are all about him and wait to be captured 
by him. They even crave the privilege of being 
his friends. The best men and women of the 



36 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN". 

world are looking to the young men about them 
for a hint of what they can do for them, for a sign 
of their readiness to be befriended. The hope of 
the world is in the young man, and all the wise 
and good know it. They are building institutions 
for him, making homes, estates, all the good things 
of our civilization for him, and are anxious beyond 
expression that he shall be worthy of it all and fit 
himself to use it well and pass it on unharmed 
and improved to his posterity. What, then, shall 
he do to make it clear to these waiting friends 
that they can trust and honor him and pass over 
to him gladly all their possessions? 

1. The first thing he has to be, is a friend to 
everybody ; the first thing he has to do is to be 
friendly Mmself. He must put the principle of 
the golden rule in practice, and be to others what 
he wants them to be to him. He must carry a 
friendly face, tongue, hand and spirit, be a friend, 
as the thing that is easy, natural, always fore- 
most. As a boy he must be friendly to his mates, 
teachers, neighbors, so that instead of being afraid 
of him, they all meet him gladly, and count him 
the joy, rather than the dread of the neighborhood. 
The man begins in the boy. All who know a 
worthy young man, like to remember that as a 
boy he was equally worthy. 1 1 makes their friend- 
ship for him all the tenderer and more confiding. 
The boy begins to make friends for his manhood, 



THE NEEDED FRIENDS. 37 

and if lie is the boy that the wise and good honor 
he makes a host of them. 

2. Then back of this outward manner and con- 
duct, he must show in his every-day life that he 
means well to everybody; that he is sincere and 
genuine; that he takes nothing not his own; that 
he does nothing vicious, or dishonorable ; that he 
shuns bad company and places ; that his tongue 
catches no bad words, nor his disposition bad tem- 
pers ; that his feet run not in foolish ways, nor 
he find pleasure in foolish people. His daily life 
must be so manly and fair that good people will 
not only be not afraid of him, but like him and 
be drawn to him. Such genuineness will win 
friends who will themselves be genuine and real 
helps in pursuit of the best things. 

3. He must not only be without bad habits and 
manners, but he must have positive virtues, be a 
positive man, stand for definite opinions and count 
for a specific intellectual and moral sum. He 
must have convictions of his own for the right on 
the great questions, have his reasons for them, and 
be pronounced for sobriety, virtue, patriotism and 
religion — an open, honest advocate of the clean 
and of good report. 

If he talks down the good things which the best 
men of all ages have honored ; if he discounts vir- 
tue; sees the prizes of life in pleasure; honors 
chiefly the sensuous and selfish in philosophy and 



38 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

conduct ; questions the facts of the higher life and 
an unselfish virtue; and so gives the weight of his 
convictions and influence to the materialistic view 
of life, it will be certain that he will shut off from 
his enjoyment and profit the best friends and 
friendship of this world. He thus chooses a lower 
grade, casts his lot with those like himself, and 
discards the higher range which he ought to keep 
open to him. 

It is great presumption in a 3^oung man of little 
knowledge and exj)erience to sit in judgment on 
the wisdom of the ages, to oppose the cherished 
and sacred things which saints have lived to glo- 
rify and martyrs have died to honor. And that 
presumption is as much in his own way as his 
verdict against sacred things. If, where the great- 
est and best men are reverent, he is flippant; if 
where the wisest walk with bated breath, he is 
self-conscious and has a sneer for aspiring faith 
and humble prayer; if, where the profoundest 
scholarship and philosophy are modestly inquir- 
ing, and the richest souls are craving guidance that 
human help cannot give, he is self-assured and 
pronounces all such humility and seeking for light, 
cant and foolishness, he, by this very attitude of 
mind, repels the friendly help he most needs and 
invites the bravado and conceit of the coarse and 
earth-minded. Nothing is more distasteful to 
truly noble minds, than that conceit of capacity 



THE XEEDED ERIEXDS. 39 

which judges of profound things without exami- 
nation, and sacred and spiritual things without 
soul-experience. Modesty in the young mind is 
so delightful to the wise and good that they are 
drawn to it as steel to a magnet. The inquiring 
mind, and humble spirit and believing soul, are 
so becoming to early years, that the youth who 
possesses them is a joy to the besfc friends he could 
possibly have, and by these he wins a friendship 
worth more than gold to him. Good men admire 
though tf ulness and good thinking. They even 
like to see the young have a good degree of inde- 
pendence in their thinking. They admire clear, 
strong intelligence. They like the young mind 
that can see through sham and pretence, that re- 
fuses the hoary wrong and accepts the new right, 
that repudiates the ancient falsehood and embraces 
the fresh truth. They like the young enthusiast 
of progress, the young searcher for what is true 
and useful, the young soul that is on fire for im- 
provement, which wants to run with animation, 
and riot plod with dulness, in the way of advanc- 
ing light and liberty and right living. Such young 
minds win upon all good people with a strange 
power, and such people befriend them with alac- 
rity of joy. There is a vast difference between 
the honest, morally earnest and reverent aspirant 
for the best things, even though he discounts an- 
cient creeds and customs, and the coarse and pur- 



40 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEN". 

blind iconoclast wlio tears down all ancient altars 
and builds no new ones in their stead. 

The young of our time are peculiarly exposed 
to this iconoclastic spirit which puts assumption 
in the place of study, bravado and sensual conceit 
in the place of reverent seeking, which puts out 
the old lights and puts nothing that is light in 
their places. 

Oh that the bright, strong young men of to-day 
could see that in the thoughtful, aspiring, rever- 
ent and believing mind, are the qualities that win 
and hold the noblest friends ! Doubt of the best 
things is not attractive of the best souls. Who- 
ever begins the life of manhood in infidelity to the 
highest things, will be very likely to become infi- 
del to the common things which are true and good, 
and will be sure to miss the friendship of those 
who can do him the most good. Blight in the top 
of the tree shows disease in the heart and root. 
There is a field for thoughtf ulness right here which 
must be left to those of discriminating mind. 

4. The young man, to make the best friends, 
must be manly — clear through and everywhere, he 
must be a man. Even a boy may be manly; he 
may take no mean advantages; he may play and 
work and trade like a man, that is, with just and 
generous respect for mutual rights ; he may scorn 
mean things and be shocked by sham and fraud ;• 
he may hate coarseness, bitterness and boastful- 



THE NEEDED FRIENDS. 41 

ness; lie may abominate a lie; and be indignant 
at cruelty; may loathe the profane and ribald; 
may himself be the sonl of honor, justice and gen- 
erosity. Many a boy is a man in all but years, 
and many a gray head is no man at all. It is not 
years and bulk that make the man. It is not 
beard, two hundred pounds and six feet in height 
that make the man. It is not bone and blood and 
muscle, mustached and tailor-finished, that con- 
stitute the man. Many a skeleton of a man walks 
the streets, big enough and old enough, that is the 
merest pigmy of a man. Half the boys in our 
public schools, or who sell papers on the streets, 
or black boots, are more manly than many well- 
grown counterfeits of men. Nothing is truer than 
that the man is not in outward things— not in 
dress, position, wealth or pretension. It is not the 
horse a man drives, nor the carriage he rides in, 
nor the woman by his side, nor the house he lives 
in, nor the servants who run at his nod for pay, 
that make the man. He is more inward and out 
of sight than all these. He is made up of manly 
qualities, of brain and heart, of sense and sensi- 
bility, of honor, justice, fairness — made up of the 
good and true things which command everybody's 
respect, and which we all know and like when Ave 
meet them. We should like them if we met them 
in a tramp. We like them when we meet them 
in the old or young. They are the qualities which 



42 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

every man ought to have and which every youth 
may cultivate; and which enrich their possessor 
with a noble manhood. 

This is the precious thing we have been search- 
ing for — the one more than golden wealth of worth, 
which these essays for young men have been driv- 
ing at. Of all things rich and fair and great, noth- 
ing in this world surpasses genuine manhood. 
And this is the one unspeakably worthy prize 
which is set before the ambition of every young 
man. It should captivate his heart, and call forth 
his manliest endeavors. For this he should live. 
It should stimulate him in his labors, business, 
study, and social life. On it he should fix his 
hopes of success. He should believe in it and 
trust it to win for him the affections of the fair 
and the friendship of the true and good. No 
matter what may be his calling, a genuine man- 
hood will serve him better than anything else. It 
will help the soundness of his judgment, will 
sharpen the acuteness of his intellect, will steady 
the impulses of his heart, will fortify him against 
temptation, will persuade him to a good life, and 
hold always before him the ideals of the best 
things for which men may live. To have a man- 
hood, clean, pure, sincere, heartily for everything 
that is best and most useful, is to have the soul 
of what men and God most honor. This it is 
which will gain and keep the best friends. And 



THE NEEDED FRIENDS. 43 

friends won by such inward worth are worth hav- 
ing, and they will stick like brothers. Their 
friendship is a constant blessing and help. Oh, it 
is good, inexpressibly good to have the confidence 
and friendship of the best people ! 

There are people who are genuine, and many of 
them. They are all about us. Tliey are not all 
in one church, or party. They are in all churches 
and parties ; and some of them are not yet in any 
church or party, because they have not yet quite 
decided where they would be most at home and 
useful ; so that young men who are true in their 
manhood, need have no fear of not being recog- 
nized and well known and honored in any church 
or party. Genuine souls will find them out. You 
cannot hide apple-blossoms, roses or heliotropes. 
Their fragrance will tell of their presence. No 
more can you hide true manhood. It will out. 
It will make the air sweet around it. It will beau- 
tify its surroundings. It will show itself in name- 
less ways to all about it. But it will be quickest 
observed and most esteemed in the churches and 
good associations which exist chiefly to produce 
and aid true manhood, so that true wisdom leads 
young men into these friendly organizations as 
their true home and place of usefulness. Every- 
body is stronger and better by the help of kindred 
spirits. 

This then, true manhood, is the first and best 



44 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

thing to be attained, and when attained is to be 
kept as sacred and guarded as the apple of the 
eye. Because it is so precious and rich, it is easily 
soiled. A little misdemeanor hurts it. A little 
soil tarnishes it. A slight corruption is a great 
injury to it. So it behooves true young men who 
have pride of character and a just sense of their 
worth, to look well to their ways, to shun evil 
companions and all beginnings of wrong, and hold 
themselves strong in the right and steadfast in 
every excellency of mind and life. So will they 
make and hold the friends they need ; so will they 
rind the profit and joy of the world's best friend- 
liness ; and so will they learn that wisdom's w r ays 
are not only ways of pleasantness, but ways of 
genuine and wide friendship with humanity. 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS BUSINESS. 45 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS BUSINESS. 

Scripture, common sense and common ne- 
cessity combine to magnify the importance of 
business. This is a world of business, and more 
than almost anything else, business promotes its 
best interests. The difference between the savage 
and the civilized man is largely that one is an 
idler and the other a man of affairs. Idleness 
promotes all the things that injure men, business 
those that benefit them. Idleness is enervating 
both to body and mind and demoralizing to char- 
acter; business is strengthening and elevating. 
Idleness is barbarous; industry manly, useful, 
civilizing. Indeed, civilization is the product of 
business. Idleness makes boobies ; business makes 
men, men of brains, endurance and character. 

So important is business that the question of 
what he shall do for a livelihood, is among the 
first a young man has to settle. The choice of 
vocation is about as difficult as any he has to 
make. With many it is the great undecided ques- 
tion, and they drift into maturity seeking employ- 



46 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEtf. 

ment at anything that may come, doing a little at 
one thing and a little at another, mastering noth- 
ing and being mastered by nothing, largely wast- 
ing the years of life which ought to be training 
all their powers for some special business. They 
can resolve on intelligence, on virtue, on religion, 
on politics, on a party and a church, easier than 
a business. They can choose their friends, their 
pleasures, their wives with less difficulty than 
their business. It is common for young men to 
be married and have children, and yet have no 
business. They stand around waiting to be em- 
ployed — to be somebody's servant, instead of tak- 
ing hold of some business to be master of it and 
forcing it to serve them and give them a place 
and make them powers in the world. The wife and 
family questions are important, but logically and 
properly the business question comes first. Busi- 
ness prepares the way and provides for the wife 
and family. That old proverb is a good one, 
" Make your cage before you catch your bird;" 
else your bird will starve, or freeze, or fly away 
before you get your cage ready. 

A blind boy in Illinois, had no choice of a busi- 
ness, but did cheerfully the only thing he could 
do, which was to make brooms. So he sat down 
to it with a martyr's resolution and soon became 
master of his business. He persevered and after 
a while employed others to help him. In a few 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS BUSINESS. il 

years he worked np a large trade, employed a 
large force of help, sent his brooms all over the 
country and by middle life became an important 
factor in the business interests of the city where 
he lived, an intelligent and respected man. He 
showed the difference between drifting among all 
employments and choosing one and mastering it 
and putting one's whole power into it. 

A young man had his eyes shot out in the late 
war. He came home and not long after got awak- 
ened to the realities of the Christian religion. He 
then coveted the minister's work. He went to a 
blind institution and studied for a time ; then to 
a Divinity School and took its full course. In 
due time he was ordained a minister, and now for 
some ten years has been a very successful minis- 
ter, happy and useful in his work as those who 
have sight. This is an example of success under 
difficulties, by putting one's whole force into one 
calling. Still another, is the case of a blind young 
man, blind from early childhod, who was educated 
at the Perkins Institute for the blind in Boston, 
and chose the teacher's business, who noAv is having 
admirable success and is winning laurels for his 
ability and fine character. He is the joy of all who 
know him, not only on his own account, but on 
account of his manly enterprise in working out a 
noble career in the night-time of total blindness. 
These examples of success under difficulties are 



48 LOCKING FOKAVAED FOR YOUNG MEJI. 

good illustrations of the importance of choosing 
and mastering some special business. 

This is a serious matter. Many young men find 
it hard to determine what business they ought to 
select. They are in doubt as to what they can do 
best, or what they are best adapted to. They 
know that a man who can only make a good 
farmer, would better not try to be a lawyer; one 
who can only trade, would better not set out for 
an artist; and one who can only be a mechanic, 
would better not attempt the physician. But they 
do not know so well what they can do. This in- 
decision casts many a cloud over young men's 
minds, and not infrequently makes youth the 
sa ddest period of life. Hence multitudes of young 
men are adrift, not proposing anything, nor know- 
ing what to propose. And many men go through 
life and never seem to know what they are made 
for, or are good for. It is a great misfortune ; and 
yet it is one that might be remedied by a little 
resolute will. It is often the result of indecision 
of character; sometimes of an ease-loving dispo- 
sition ; and sometimes of a fickle mind. Yet, there 
are real difficulties in the way. Blind Tom, the 
marvellous colored musician, much noted in his 
day, a mental imbecile, almost a natural fool, who 
could do but one thing, which was to make music, 
at which he was a prodigy, had no difficulty of 
this kind, nor had others for him. He was music 



THE YOUXG MAN AXD HIS BUSINESS. 49 

and nothing else. It captivated him, absorbed 
him. He hardly had to learn it. Once hearing a 
piece of music, he played it readily and never for- 
got it. So he must do the only thing he could do, 
or do nothing. 

To do nothing should be out of the question. 
To be a dolittle is bad enough — a thing which 
everybody should abominate ; but to be a donoth- 
ing is just about inhuman. The donothings must 
be the rubbish of humanity — the miserables. 

When one can do many things equally well — is 
" a jack at all trades," and has no especial drawing 
to any, and all seem equally overdone in the com- 
munity, it is not easy to know what is best for him 
to do. But one thing may be settled at once, that 
in all kinds of business there seems to be no room 
for more, but room is being made all the time. 
Men are dying all the time; are retiring from busi- 
ness all the time ; are changing business all the 
time; are failing, or going to other parts. This is 
not a stand-still world. Because a business is 
overdone is no reason why a young man should 
not adopt it, if lie has a liking for it, or a way 
opens for him to engage in it, Nor is it any rea- 
son why one should not adopt one of several kinds 
of businesses, because he can do them all equally 
well. He cannot pursue them all successfully, so 
he must take one and stick to it, A division of 
labor is the law in civilized life. No one must at- 
4 



50 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

tempt everything. Choose one and go for it for 
all one is worth, is the true doctrine and way of 
success ; and choose early if possible. 

Now and then a young man knows exactly what 
he wants to do, without any reference to how much 
it is overdone, or neglected. It is good fortune to 
have such a decision ready-made. Of a family of 
four brothers only one knew what he wanted to 
do. He fixed on the prevailing business of his 
neighborhood, the one most overdone, and fixed 
on it when but a boy, and against the wishes of 
his parents, and against the training of his early 
years ; and of the four he was the most fortunate 
in business and the best satisfied with his busi- 
ness life. Contented, successful and happy, the 
business which he made, made him, and life went 
well with him. 

There is no room for the young in any business, 
if they are faint-hearted. It is for them to push 
in and make room. As Daniel Webster said to 
the young man who asked him if the legal pro- 
fession was full, " There is always room up high; " 
so we may believe that there is always room for 
one who will make it. The earnest, hard-working, 
pushing, generally find room. Of the honorable 
and useful callings, the rule is to choose the one 
you like best and would most like to succeed in. 
Then master it, study it, become an adept in it, 
grow to it and by skill and push work it to suc- 
cessful results, 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS BUSINESS. 51 

Don't be too covetous of an easy berth. The 
best things are not easily secured. Gold is in the 
hard rocks and usually deep in the mountains. 
The world is large and rich in raw materials and 
undeveloped opportunities. There are great dis- 
coveries and great inventions, and great businesses 
yet to be made. The field for talent, energy and 
industry is immense. The people never were so 
well off as to-day, and were never so ready to use 
the products of industry, taste and talent. More 
workers are needed every year in every depart- 
ment. While new fields for skill and talent are 
all the time being opened, the old are being re- 
newed by improvements and inventions, so that 
the world is being made over constantly. Here 
is a great continent all about us only slighly set- 
tled and but little developed. It is crying out for 
population, for talent, energy, industry, to de- 
velop its resources. There is no occasion for fear, 
or hesitation on account of the business prospects. 
They are so great that no imagination can compre- 
hend their possibilities. They are limited only by 
the talent and energy to be put into them. The 
young may take courage from the greatness of the 
work before them and push in for the best there is 
in them in all legitimate pursuits. It is of first 
importance that one shall want to do something 
useful. There are hurtful kinds of business 
which the evils of society produce, which should 



5$ LOOKIKG FORWARD FOR YOUKG JiEtf. 

be outlawed in the minds of all well-meaning 
youth, in which they should resolve that nothing 
shall induce them to engage. They should refuse 
on principle not to invest money, or labor, in a 
business hurtful to humanity, however financially 
profitable it may be. Profits must not be weighed 
against principle. Neither money, or labor, or 
property must be used against the good of men. 
To hurt society is not legitimate business. To 
take money for that which is not " goods," is not 
business, but robbery. All "goods" that come 
properly under the name, are things useful to 
men; and are the staple of legitimate business. 
All traffic in things harmful to men is illegitimate 
and not business. 

Beyond the desire and purpose to engage in 
some useful pursuit, is the ambition to make a 
place in the world for one's self. Every man has 
a right to an honorable place among his fellows, 
to the consideration due to a man among men. It 
is in the order of civilized society that this shall 
be secured in legitimate business. In savage soci- 
ety a man secures distinction by his size, or 
strength, or agility, but in civilized society by his 
success in useful affairs — by his skill in work, his 
industry in the useful arts, or his ability as a 
manager of affairs that promote the well-being of 
society. A man earns his place in earning his liv- 
ing. This is the recompense of well-doing. There 



the young max and his business. 53 

are few things that more help a man than these 
noble ambitions, to be useful and to merit and 
have the respect of his fellow-men. These stir 
him to noble endeavors and hold him through his 
life to do his best to act a worthy part in the great 
human drama. These impulses to a worthy ca- 
reer are not confined to great men and great affairs, 
but are equally active in men of worthy mettle in 
all classes. They are a grand inspiration even in 
the humble, and Avork the miracles of honorable 
living in the great multitudes of our American 
society. 

A common laborer once said to Billy Gray, the 
wealthiest merchant of Boston in his day, " You 
needn't put on airs, Billy Gray, for I knew you 
when you was only a drummer boy." "And didn't 
I drum well?" responded Gray, prouder of his 
drumming as a boy, than of his success as a mer- 
chant. It was the impulse to drum to ell in the 
boy, that was the fountain of the good ambition 
in the man. The desire to be and do well is hon- 
orable, and should possess every young man, as a 
ruling passion. There is more business in this one 
element of character, than in almost anything else 
in men. It is difficult to make much of a man of 
weak ambition. If he cares little of what others 
think of him, he is deficient in one of the great 
incentives to human endeavor. This desire to be 
and do well is commendable. And while it stim- 



54 LOOKING FORWARD FOE YOUNG MEN. 

ulates to business, stimulates also to worthiness of 
character and life. 

Few men are successful in business just for the 
love of it. There is usually something back of it 
which impels to it. Sometimes it is necessity; 
but often a worthy ambition comes in to take the 
drudgery out of business toil. But when men are 
stimulated to business because it is the manly 
way of life, because it is physically and morally 
wholesome, because it is honorable, because it 
promotes all human interests, the good of society 
and the improvement of the world, it ceases to be 
simple toil and becomes life, development, manli- 
ness, the way of usefulness and happiness. 

Though in choosing a business, the first rule is 
to choose the one you like best, it is almost cer- 
tain that this will become drudgery if it is not 
pursued with a manly, moral purpose, for the sake 
of making a good character and life by it and tak- 
ing a useful and honorable place in the world. 
We must not expect that business will be pleasure 
except as we put into it the great aims and uses of 
life. If we go about it for pleasure, or expect 
pleasure in it, without the aims of noble and use- 
ful living, we shall soon be corrected, for the busi- 
ness we think we shall like, will soon be a slave's 
toil. With these all business, work and toil be- 
come dignified and desirable. One of the reasons 
why the business of so many is fatiguing is that 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS BUSINESS. 55 

they put so little moral purpose and manly en- 
deavor into it. Because they do it as a task in- 
stead of a privilege, it is a grinding tax upon them. 
While men work wishing for the end of the day, 
anxious to flee from their tasks, they will be at 
war with their work. They must remember that 
business in itself is not pleasure. It is what we 
carry into it that gives it pleasurable qualities. 

Business is really the training school of life — 
the gymnasium in which power, endurance, char- 
acter are developed. The mind is trained by 
slower processes than the body. Character ma- 
tures slower than muscle. Manhood is made by 
the work of a life-time. Hence, when one has 
chosen a business, to get the best results from it, 
he must stick to it. He must grow to it, so that 
he and his business shall be almost one. He must 
magnify it by his best endeavors; put thought 
and push into it; so will it make the most of him. 

The benefits of business are twofold. The first 
and direct benefit is support — a living, as it is 
called. The second is the development of charac- 
ter. This is the most lost sight of, yet most im- 
portant. Perhaps the usef ul enjoyments of men, 
taking all men, do more to make their characters 
than their schools and churches. Indeed, schools 
and churches are aids to the great work which 
human employments chiefly promote. Men, in 
the closely interlaced relations of society, make 



5G LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

life a success only when they live by the rules of 
sound philosophy and true morality. These are 
immensely promoted by our daily business em- 
ployments. 

At the bottom of a sound character and a true 
life is integrity, and there is nothing that more 
promotes it than business. Every day and every 
business demands integrity. If we only work for 
another we are put upon our integrity to work 
honestly and well. The slave will cheat in his 
work, because he works under compulsion, and 
without the reward of labor. But the free worker 
works as a man works, under contract, to prove 
his skill and earn his reward — works to honor 
himself and benefit the community. 

Another element of true life is humanity; and 
few things more promotes it than business. Busi- 
ness men are in constant intercourse with each 
other — with the world as it is. They learn it well 
— its worst and its best. They learn how to sym- 
pathize with it, learn the wants of human nature 
and how to be patient with it and generous to it. 
Our best business men, are our best philanthro- 
pists. Such names as George Peabody, William 
E. Dodge, Peter Cooper, illustrate the statement. 
Few better records of charity and quick sympathy 
for humanity, are ever left in this world by our 
noblest men, than they left. They began life as poor 
boys, They made great fortunes by faithful de- 



THE YOUKG MAX AXD HIS BUSINESS. 57 

votion to business, and were always generous con- 
tributors to charity, education and every good 
cause. In the last twenty years of their lives, they 
gave many thousands of dollars every year to good 
works, and were seemingly more interested in ben- 
efitting the needy classes, than in their business. 
As they grew rich, they grew generous and kind. 
And this is the proper result of business well done. 

One point more should be mentioned just here. 
~No true man is only a business man. He is al- 
ways something more. He makes his business 
help him to become intelligent. Through his busi- 
ness he learns human nature, learns of the world, 
of his country and his kind, and so his interests 
reach out in all these directions, and he becomes 
broad-minded, large-hearted, many-purposed. Be- 
yond one's business, there are always the great in- 
terests of the community, education, reform, the 
country, the church, demanding the care and help 
of business men. These great interests are best 
promoted by the trained j udgment and interested 
public spirit of the men of aifairs. And they are 
not for a few, but for all. Every man, however 
great or small his business, has an interest in 
these things as the outgrowth of business. 

Then let the young men understand, that busi- 
ness has all the great affairs of the world in its 
hands. They not only furnish the money, but 
largely the brains to direct them. They are urn 



58 LOOKIXG FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEK. 

derneath all the grand things that promote civili- 
zation. Business is not selfish and narrow nnless 
men make it so. It is not low and mean unless 
men carry mean spirits into it. It abounds with 
the grandest opportunities for great and good 
things; and young men should be nobly quick- 
ened, to go into it, not only to get a living, but to 
be high-minded men and make the most of them- 
selves and do the most for mankind that their 
powers will admit. 

One thing more seems urgent to be said touch- 
ing what men shall do and how they shall do it. 
Though men are to " choose the business they like 
best," it is not wise to decide till by careful study 
of themselves they have determined what they 
are best adapted to. Their judicious friends may 
know them better than they know themselves. 
Their mental and bodily condition should do much 
in deciding what they shall do. Often an experi- 
enced phrenologist will throw great light upon 
this question. The science of mind is really the 
science of life, and if we know how to apply it in 
the choice and conduct of our business, our suc- 
cess is assured. 

An expert in the study of men may so apply 
the teachings of this science as to make clear the 
kind of business to which one is best adapted and 
the enterprise and force he will put into it. All 
available light should be secured in deciding what 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS BUSINESS. 59 

business we shall choose, and when it is chosen, 
all our energies and our best ambitions should be 
devoted to such a conduct of it as shall make our 
lives useful and develop in us the best character 
of which we are capable. Business is a grand 
school of character, and when we are in the busi- 
ness to which we are exactly filled, we do best in 
working out the best results both for ourselves 



and others. 



60 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN". 



CHAPTER V. 

BUSINESS AND SOMETHING MOKE. 

In the preceding chapter, it was the aim to mag- 
nify the importance of business, not only as a ne- 
cessity to live, but as a privilege for the develop- 
ment of character. It was held that business in 
its fullest use is a school for the acquisition of in- 
telligence and the development of manhood. The 
great difference between savage and civilized life 
is that one is a life of idleness, and the other of 
business. How handless is the man of the woods ! 
How many-handed is the man of the home, the 
farm, the city. This American continent as it was 
four hundred years ago when discovered by Co- 
lumbus, and as it is to-day, shows the difference 
between the savage and the civilized man, and 
that difference shows the meaning of business. It 
is scarcely possible to say too much for business 
as an instrumentality for making men and society. 
But there are qualifications to be made to all 
Uhese good things said of business. There are 
other sides to a true life, than its business side. 
No man who is only a business man is a full man. 
It was said in the chapter on business that nq 



Business and something more. 61 

true man is only a business man ; lie is always a 
business man and something more. The inquiry 
now is about this something more. So impor- 
tant is business, it is so magnified in community, 
and is so absorbing, that multitudes become mere 
business machines — the cogs and wheels, the 
belts and bolts of the world's great business fac- 
tory. How many men are business men and noth- 
ing more. They can talk of nothing but busi- 
ness; they think of nothing but business; they 
do nothing but business. They are business en- 
gines, who when they are started always go off in 
their one direction. Like clocks which can only 
keep time, like scales which can only weigh, like 
sewing-machines which can only sew, numberless 
men can only do business. All their wit, all their 
energy, all their ambition, are trained to business. 
They awake from sleep to business. They have 
business for breakfast, dinner and supper. Their 
evening entertainment, and their Sunday medita- 
tion are of business ; and they go to bed to dream 
of business through the night. They have wives 
and families, but they give them only the odd 
moments of time which necessity requires. They 
expect their drives to be courtesy, civility and 
sociability for them. They have neighbors, but 
they seldom see the inside of their houses, except 
at funerals. They have papers and books, not to 
read them, but because it is the fashion to have 



6-2 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

them. The societies they join are business 
men's clubs. Their holidays are fairs and business 
parades. They are so full of business that they 
have no time to be, or do anything else. They 
see nothing in life but business. They are immense 
workers and put all there is in them of talent, 
worth and power into their business. They are 
extremists who in this age of great business ac- 
tivity are caught in the swirl of material interests 
without knowing how utterly they are swallowed 
up, or how their one-sidedness looks to people of 
a broader range of life. 

This large class of men are largely lost to many 
of the best interests of society, because of their 
utter absorption in business. And they are los- 
ing much of the best of life because they have so 
narrowed their interests to the business grooves. 
This is not the fault of business, but of those who 
do it. Business has usurped an undue dominance 
in a large number of minds, because of its neces- 
sity and importance. It is time a halt w r as called 
to this business rush, and men were led to con- 
sider what else they should be besides " hewers of 
wood a ad drawers of water." 

Our material interests are many and important, 
but we all have greater interests which it is crim- 
inal to neglect. Man is a mind more than a body. 
He is a heart and a soul more than a mind. Busi- 
ness relates chiefly to the body, its raiment, food, 



business AtfB something more. 68 

comfort. The tilings of mind, heart, soul are of 
secondary importance in the business estimate. 
This is a wrong estimate which should be cor- 
rected. Every thoughtful man should reconsider 
this estimate ; and every business man should be 
a thoughtful man. The purpose of this little 
book is in part to quicken thought in rela- 
tion to human life and its well-being. To think 
seriously is to begin to improve. To keep on 
thinking is to turn life into a college. To put 
mind in the lead of life is to civilize, dignify and 
glorify both mind and life. Business has put 
mind and life too much into a depressing servi- 
tude. Business men are working too hard and 
too incessantly. Work is made a drudgery by 
being overdone. The business day is too long. 
It leaves too little time and strength for more im- 
portant things. Men have minds to feed and 
clothe as well as bodies, and if either is to be 
neglected it would better be the body. Men are 
breaking down their bodies under the strain of 
business. They go to their beds every night like 
jaded horses to their stalls, and get up every 
morning feeling as worn and old as their grand- 
fathers. Multitudes of business men are as old 
at fifty as they ought to be at eighty and are 
fuller of ailments than the doctors are of remedies. 
There is a nervous tension to our lives which is 
wrecking multitudes in the hey-day of their use- 



64 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUHG MEK. 

fulness. Business has put on too much steam 
and everything else has turned to gathering fuel 
and firing up. The whole of the day-time and a 
good part of the night are put to the business 
rush, and many want Sunday " into the bargain." 
The trouble is that the material side of life is over- 
done. We make too much of it, and are unwise 
in the way of doing it. It is time to stop and 
think how we can do better, how we can care 
properly for our minds and souls and not leave 
our bodies un cared for. 

We should begin by reducing our material 
wants; then shorten up the business day; then 
strike out for a broader and deeper intelligence. 

In this line of intelligence what splendid oppor- 
tunities are open to us. This is the age of intel- 
ligence. Every known science is flourishing, and 
new sciences and fields of intelligence are coming 
often to invite our attention. Books, simple, 
brilliant and powerful, are plenty as nuts in the 
autumn, and as easily obtained. Information the 
best and the richest almost floats in the air. 
Schools, teachers, helps to knowledge abound. 
Men are ignorant in our time only because they 
turn away from knowledge — because they re- 
fuse to learn — because they give the whole of 
their time to other things. Even men in the 
common walks of life in our country may be 
intelligent if they will. The late Elihu Burritt— 



BtJSlKESS Aifl) SOMETHING MOEE. 65 

the learned blacksmith" as he was called, 



became the master of fifty languages, an author, 
lecturer, philanthropist, the associate of scholars, 
the joy of the intelligent world, without neg- 
lecting his anvil and hammer. Business did 
not shut up his mind, did not monopolize his 
thoughts, or time, did not stand in the way of his 
attainment of knowledge, nor his growth as a 
scholar and a man, but helped him to all these 
things. He was a good blacksmith and earned a 
good living by his trade, earned money to buy 
books and help, and kept on at his business till 
his accumulating knowledge forced him into the 
world. He simply did not drown his mind in 
business, but fed it, kept it active, made business 
serve it. 

The late Maria Mitchel, perhaps our country's 
best astronomer, who lately passed away at sev- 
enty years of age, was humbly born, and by the 
early death of her mother, had, when a young 
girl, the care of her family thrown upon her. But 
she did not on account of her care and work, fail 
to use her mind in the pursuit of knowledge. By 
her father's help, who had become an amateur 
student of astronomy, she made use of the time 
she could get from her work, to acquaint herself 
with that science, and continued its study till her 
scholarship made her known to the astronomical 
world, when about twenty-five years ago she was 
5 



66 LOOKIXG FORWARD FOR YOUXO MEK. 

appointed to the professorship in that science in 
Vassar College. Her father was a business man 
who snatched from his spare hours time enough 
to make himself intelligent in astronomy and be- 
come the teacher of his afterward learned and 
celebrated daughter. 

These cases among many others that might be 
cited prove that the noblest intellectual attain- 
ments, are within the reach of the common people 
whose necessities comx>el them to give heed to the 
affairs of business. It is true, therefore, that by 
beginning young, business men may become in- 
telligent in general scientific and practical knowl- 
edge. They may become the peers of scholars. 
Their business affords them some opportunities 
that scholars do not have. It gives them a world 
of facts at first hand that scholars must get second 
hand if at all. In the study of human nature busi- 
ness is the best of all schools, and the science of 
human nature is the greatest of all sciences. There 
is no doubt but the principal study of mankind is 
man. And to whom are men more constantly 
open than to the business man? Of all students 
of human nature he ought to be the best. Of all 
judges of men and what is for their best good he 
ought to be best. As a politician, as a judge, as a 
practical philosopher, he ought to surpass other 
men ; and he would if he did not shut himself in 
so closely to business. If he read the best books, 



BUSINESS AND SOMETHING MORE. 67 

studied history, familiarized his mind with the 
best ideas of practical life, entered into the great 
realm of intelligent life about him to possess it 
and be of it, he would be influential and useful 
in it. 

Of all the practical philosophers and thinkers 
which America has produced, probably Benjamin 
Franklin heads the list, and he was a business 
man with only the rudiments of a common school 
education. But in his business and with it, he 
was a life-long student — a constant reader of books 
which gave him the best information — actively 
interested in everything which concerned human 
weil-being — a seeker of intelligent society, and a 
searcher for new knowledge. Fortunately for 
him, he lived before the daily newspaper, the great 
dissipater of mind, the great hodge-podge of un- 
sorted information, in which truth and falsehood, 
good and evil have equal share. 

Of course he who would be truly intelligent, 
who would enrich his mind, who would fit him- 
self for the best life, will read the daily newspaper 
but little. Books and papers which instruct, which 
deal with facts and principles, which are written 
by honest and well-meaning men, are the real 
helps to the information men need. These were 
the books which Franklin read and recommended. 
They are the books which will always help make 
men like him. In many respects he is the great 



68 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEX. 

pattern for business men. His life is a good one 
for young men to read and study. And others 
like his offer a great field for biographical study. 
Indeed, the study of the lives of the great and 
good is one of the most useful fields of study we 
can enter. There we are in the best of company, 
get the grandest ideas, and are quickened by the 
noblest ambitions. Every young man should have 
constantly on hand some hrst-class book of biog- 
raphy, and read a chapter every day. The biog- 
raphy in history is one of its most interesting and 
useful departments. Some histories are particu- 
larly full in this department. I know of no other 
so full as Macaulay's History of England, which 
gives a sketch of almost every leading man in the 
period embraced. The idea urged under this head 
is that every business man should be a reading 
man, a thinking man, a growing man in the best 
intelligence. 

Business embraces the great body of the people 
and they should be intelligent outside of their 
business. They should know much of the world 
and its affairs, and may if they will. Young men 
who early feed their minds on useful knowledge 
and keep doing it, will ornament and ennoble busi- 
ness by and bye with a rich and helpful intelligence. 
They who start out to be something more than 
business men and put energy and industry into 
this resolution, will be very likely to enrich and 
honor their business careers. 



BUSINESS AND SOMETHING MOKE. 69 

There is another and the highest field of life 
from which multitudes of business men shut them- 
selves away by their absorption in their affairs, 
that is, the moral and religious field. The world 
grows most and best by its moralities. The world 
is most enriched by right living. The best philos- 
ophy is righteousness in practice. The best sci- 
ence is the golden rule in action. The best man- 
hood is that most charged with conscience and 
genuine religion. The best thing in business is 
its alliance with the great precepts of the gospel. 
All these best things are easily within the reach 
of all business men ; and yet how many such men 
ignore them altogether. 

There are great moral questions now agitating 
the minds and consciences of the best men and 
women of the world, questions which involve the 
most sacred interests of society, even business it- 
self, which multitudes of business men think they 
have nothing to do with, simply because they are 
so absorbed with the fanaticism of business that 
they can see nothing else and have no interest in 
anything else. There are business fanatics equal 
to any religious fanatics — rank one-idea d men, 
as cranky as the half-crazy advocates of the nar- 
rowest ism. They are plenty and all about us. 
Any business man is beside himself who neglects 
to ally himself with the great moral interests of 
society. Business is allied in interest with the 



70 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUXG MEX. 

good and not with the evil of society. Business 
nourishes most where there is the most right liv- 
ing, where moral reforms, schools, and churches are 
X)lentiest, where people are most interested in the 
best things. Business can't afford to neglect right- 
eousness — can't afford to neglect anything which 
promotes the well-being of society. Business 
can't afford to join with low life, with sensualism, 
with the brute inheritance in our nature and thus 
put its heavy heel on morality and religion. This 
is the fanaticism of wrong-headedness to which 
many business men are joined. The great wrongs 
in our midst are supported by such men. How 
they play shy of the moral essay and lecture and 
sermon. How they fight against morality in poli- 
tics, against laws to promote righteousness, against 
high character as a qualification for office. Surely 
many business men may well reconsider their at- 
titude toward the advancing moralities which are 
the genuine promoters of all true business in their 
promotion of human well-being. 

This infidelity to the best things is markedly 
visible in the attitude of many business men to 
religion wdiich embraces all the moralities and 
humanities, all the higher interests of men. lum- 
bers of them are simply careless of it — indifferent 
to it because they are so entirely absorbed in busi- 
ness. They have no mind for anything else, and 
think they have no time, Their notion is that 



BUSINESS AND SOMETHING MORE. 71 

they are providers of bread and butter for the 
family, and the women and children must pro- 
vide the religion. How common it is for women 
to be left alone in the highest things; to be wid- 
owed where companionship is richest and sweet- 
est. How common for young men to attend their 
young lady friends at church and be courteous, 
and sympathetic in religious things till they are 
married and a little after, and then leave them to 
go widowed and lonely to the sacred opportuni- 
ties they used to enjoy together. 

Against this over-absorption in buisness, against 
this burying the higher man in dollars and cents, 
against this sinking out of sight the right and 
holy life of an immortal being, and making of such 
a being a mere pack-horse for the temporalities 
of earth and sense, the strongest word that can be 
spoken is none too strong. It is to be hoped that 
the young men to whom this word is written will 
consider it well and will resolutely resolve to profit 
by it. Business is good, but there is something 
more. in life that is a great deal better. There is 
a great world of better things open to the manly 
minds and souls of true young men. Rise up to 
these things and live for them with the devotion 
of lovers to their brides. Tour business will not 
suffer from, it but be improved. There are great- 
numbers of the foremost business men of our 
country to-day who are the foremost men in cdu- 



TZ LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG 3IEX. 

cation, reform and religion. A list of their names 
which could be easily gathered would be a galaxy 
of glory. They are all ambitious for the young 
men of the country to follow in their footsteps 
and make good their places when they are gone. 
None of the professions are giving better men to 
the world than are the business callings, proving 
that the high virtues that make the noblest of 
men, are promotive of business success. So, do 
your business well and read and study to become 
widely and wisely intelligent outside of it. Do 
your business well and seek to charge your life 
in doing it, with the high moralities which honor 
men in all ages and all worlds. Do your business 
well and give your support to every good princi- 
ple that is struggling against the evil of the world 
and for the benefit of mankind. Do your busi- 
ness well, and be loyal and loving to that Great 
Spirit of Infinite Good Will whom we call our 
Father in heaven, and whose will to us and our 
duty to him, are shown in the perfect teachings 
and life of Jesus Christ, 



THE YOUXd MAX AXD HIS POLITICS. 73 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS POLITICS. 

That saying of Paul that " The powers that be 
are ordained of God," is a statement of the inten- 
tion of God in human government. He has given 
no form of government, but he has made it clear 
that government is a human necessity. Men are 
so made that they must be governed by established 
rules of general application, but the form of their 
government is left to human politics to devise. 
Society could not exist without government. So- 
cial order depends on it. Safety to property and 
life are secured by it. All that we prize most in 
our civilization we owe in large degree to it. So 
important is it that men in the most advanced 
communities would soon fall back into barbarism 
were they not held to order, mutual respect and 
the support of their institutions by the strong arm 
of the government. 

AVe are too little accustomed to think of what 
we owe to this complicated, invisible, much-ma- 
ligned, yet always powerful thing which we call 
" the government."' We complain of it, scold about 
it, berate its corruptions, storm at its officials, get 



74 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN". 

indignant over what it does not do, and sometimes 
almost wish we had no government; yet it is the 
cherishing mother of all onr most valuable insti- 
tutions. We owe more to it than we can ever pay. 
Our homes, property and lives are secured to ns 
by it. It fixes the boundaries of our lands, estab- 
lishes and maintains our highways, aims to keep 
inviolable the sanctities of marriage, provides 
schools for our children, gives ns a postal service 
which carries our letters to the ends of the earth 
and does it for the merest pittance, holds intact 
our town, county and state organizations, so that 
through them our personal rights and affairs may 
never be without an immediate protection, compels 
respect for our persons and property wherever we 
go in the wide world, and keeps up the commerce 
and intercourse of the nations so that the people 
of the whole world promote each other's welfare 
and live much as one people and one family. 
Government, then, in this wide view, is invaluable 
to us — is the support of our civilization and all 
our rich privileges and institutions. 

Government as we have it, is the growth of all 
the past. It has come to us by the toil and tug 
and sacrifice of all the generations before us. 
Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, Judea, Gaul, Brit- 
ain, Scandinavia, and all modern nations have 
contributed to it. It was not made, it grew. Its 
roots are in the soil of all people. It is the 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS POLITICS. 75 

ripened fruit of the tree of humanity. The best 
philosophers, scholars, jurists, philanthropists, 
moralists, religionists, have contributed to its ex- 
cellences. It is the combined wisdom of all the 
ages crystallized in the simple and practical forms 
of popular government. Imperfect as we think 
they are, they are the best the world has been able 
to give us. Their most peculiar excellence is their 
recognition of the equality of men before the law. 
They repudiate the old superstitions of king-craft 
and class distinctions and hail all men as equally 
entitled to respect and protection and equally 
subject to the duties of government. This which 
is so simple a matter to us, was the greatest inno- 
vation upon the old systems which our fathers 
made, and for which we have most to be thankful. 
At the age of twenty-one, every young man in 
our country becomes the equal before the law of 
every other man and has a voice and hand in the 
administration of all public affairs. It is worthy 
of remembrance, that many of the most noted and 
influential men in the time of the Revolution and 
in the formation of our government were young 
men under forty, and some of the most brilliant 
under thirty. One of the youngest was Alexan- 
der Hamilton, who had no superior in power and 
in devotion to the American cause, who became 
noted as a powerful writer when but nineteen 
years of age. This appeal to what is best in the 



76 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

young and in all the people, is one of the strong 
points in our government ; its most popular safe- 
guard. It is a government by the people and for 
the people and will have the support.of the people 
till they are terribly fallen into bad ways. 

In every form of modern government it is com- 
plicated and involves many principles — is a bal- 
ance of many reasons and a compromise of many 
opposing forces. Not easily has this balance been 
attained. It is like the adjustment of compli- 
cated machinery, the many parts and forces fitting 
together in mutual relations to secure the least 
friction and the greatest power and success. A 
great thing, therefore, is human government in 
our modern civilization. We ought to realize 
what it is, how tardily and at what sacrifices it 
has come to us at last, and how all our interests 
are complicated with it. We cannot let it alone 
because it will not let us alone. We are in its 
hands and are used for its purposes ; it is, there- 
fore, for us to be purposely of it and to give it the 
aid of our most intelligent direction. 

It is clear, then, that in our country the young 
man's politics is one of his great interests. All 
he has or hopes for, is involved in it; and to be 
indifferent to it, or ignorant of its affairs, is to be 
suicidal to his own interests. And not only a, few, 
but all young men are called by all their interests 
to an active participation in politics. 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS POLITICS. 

Politics is not the business of a coterie, a clique, 
an interested few who make a profession and a 
living of it only, but of all the people. It is one 
of the evils that has befallen the people's business 
that a few have monopolized it to manage it in 
their own interest. It is really everybody's mat- 
ter, and nothing is more important than that every- 
body should attend with intelligence and zeal to 
this vital affair. 

Let us look at the matter a little. What is 
politics ? Webster thus defines it: " The science 
of government; that part of ethics which has to 
do with the regulation and government of a na- 
tion or a state, the preservation of its safety, peace 
and prosperity ; the defence of its existence against 
foreign control or conquest, the augmentation of 
its strength and resources and the protection of its 
citizens in their rights, with the preservation and 
improvement of their morals/' A fine definition. 
To consider it a little in detail may be profitable. 

First. " It is the science of government; " not 
a haphazard management, not a scheme of strat- 
egy for spoils, not a game of promises and votes, 
not a place-hunting system of getting up in the 
world, but a real science, or application of known 
principles of human rights and duties to the con- 
duct of public affairs, or in other words, the ap- 
plication of private wisdom and virtue to imblic 
life. And it is true that £>olitics in this high sense 



78 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

of an ethical science, has developed some of the 
greatest men and grandest characters in the states- 
men that have adorned the annals of countries 
that the world has ever known. The great states- 
men always shine w r ith peculiar lustre, both in 
their day and in history. 

Second. " That part of ethics which has to do 
with the regulation and government of a nation." 
And what is ethics ? Webster defines it, " The 
science of human duty." It is that which relates 
to morals, to Tightness of conduct, to duty as ap- 
plied to our social relations. Ethics in politics is 
morality, lightness of conduct and principles ap- 
plied to public affairs. Ethics is simply another 
word for morality. Ethics in politics is moral 
principle applied in the. extended relations of na- 
tional life. The study of politics is the study of 
what is right in the conduct of a nation. And 
what is right in a nation is simply what is right 
in the individual. The moral law that should 
govern the individual man, is the moral law that 
should govern the nation. There is not one kind 
of morality for private life, and another for pub- 
lic life. Everywhere in private and in public, the 
golden rule and the principles of right action are 
to be applied to human conduct. Truly, then, 
politics is among the great and good things that 
should interest every intelligent, well-meaning 
person. Young and old, men and women, minis- 



THE YOUNG MAN" AND HIS POLITICS. 79 

ters and people, scholars, moralists, every one of 
public spirit, should honor and study politics, and 
seek by it to apply all right principles to the well- 
being of society. 

Politics in a republic is actually everybody's 
business, so that no common mind can be excused 
from an interest in it and a duty to it. The prin- 
ciples of public well-being are just as easily un- 
derstood as those of private well-being. All com- 
mon-sense people understand them and ought to 
resolutely seek to apply them to public interests. 

Third. The farther definition of politics is, 
u The preservation of the safety, peace and pros- 
perity of the state." This is important. The 
safety of the state must be guarded. It is ex- 
posed to attack from without, and rebellion from 
within, and its defence in either case is its loyal 
people. In the late civil strife in this country 
the defenders of the national unity, were largely 
young men. It is an old saying, " Young men for 
war and old men for counsel." But while this is 
generally true, it is equally true that young men 
may be intelligent and wise concerning the means 
of defence and the principles involved. 

In the organization of our national government 
there was great wisdom in many of its young 
men. None contributed more to it than some of 
them. Always in the defence of a country the 
young men are a stalwart part. But how is the 



80 LOOKIKG FORWARD TOR YOUKG MEK. 

safety of our country chiefly exposed? Here is a 
vital matter. We are an isolated people, and 
live at a great distance from the nations that have 
power to menace us. From them we are almost 
perfectly safe. But are we safe from all enemies? 
JSTo, we are never entirely safe. We have enemies 
within, the only ones that threaten us. They are 
enemies to the manhood and virtue of young men. 
Whatever deceives, weakens, unmans young men, 
is the enemy of the country. Whatever impov- 
erishes and degrades the people is the enemy of 
the country. Whatever carries desolation and 
w r oe to the home is the enemy of the country. 
Whatever demoralizes society is the enemy of 
the country. Have we not an institution of evil 
spread far and wide among us that does all this ? 
What is the drinking saloon but a secret, a dire- 
ful and a powerful enemy of the whole people? 
Is the country safe with the saloon everywhere 
working its enormous destruction of time, money, 
talents and virtue? Is the country at peace with 
an enemy intrenched in its midst in ten thousand 
fortresses, from which it is carrying destruction 
to all its great interests? Here is war all over the 
country; savage, effective, perpetual. And it is 
war intrenched in politics — in the degradation 
and perversion of politics. Where are the defend- 
ers of the country against this enemy now? They 
are chiefly the young men of uncorrupted minds 



The youxg Max axd his politics. 81 

who are awake to the clangers that threaten their 
country. As the young men of the country stayed 
the tide of rebellion in '61 and by their stalwart 
loyalty conquered a peace that has brought great 
prosperity, so now may they do the same thing 
against any enemy, with equal loyalty and zeal. 
The weapons are now different, but the work is 
similar. It is preserving the institutions of the 
country and securing peace and prosperity. " Pros- 
perity ! " This is the end our definition of politics 
has in view, the prosperity of the people. But 
the saloon works destruction and not prosperity. 
There is no adversity more severe than saloon- 
wrought adversity. There is no ruin more wide- 
spread and deep-going than that wrought by the 
army marshalled at the call of the saloon. 

But the saloon is linked with corruption, in- 
trigue and all the powers of evil. All evil things 
are combined under its leadership. It is, there- 
fore, the head and front of that great army of evil 
against which the genuine young men of our time 
and the immediate future have to tight in defence 
of their country. And the fight is to be on the 
battle-field of politics. The weapons are to be 
righteous principles, rational arguments, honest 
votes, high-toned manhood, thrown into the con- 
flict for all they are worth. 

Fourth. Our definition of politics closes thus : 
" The augmentation of the country's strength and 
6 



82 LOOKIHG FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEtf. 

resources and the protection of its citizens in their 
rights, with the preservation and improvement of 
their morals." This is a noble conclusion which 
makes politics one of the grand fields of human 
endeavor. 

"The augmentation of the country's strength 
and resources." Where is a country's strength, 
but in the righteous character of its people, the 
consistency of its laws and the usefulness of its 
customs and institutions? In a republic like ours, 
these tilings constitute the great sources of power. 
We are strong as we are right. In our country 
no question is settled till it is settled right. Right 
makes might. To stand for the right is to augment 
strength. To maintain the cause of the right, to 
train in the army of the right, to advocate and be 
counted for the right, to vote and be consistently 
zealous for the right, is to augment the strength 
of the country. A country prospers in talent, in 
character, in resources, in proportion as its people 
live by the principles of rectitude. Rev. Thomas 
Star King was once riding with an English friend 
from New York to Boston. When well along in 
Massachusetts the English friend remarked that 
he did not see how the people raised anything on 
such a soil. " Who ever heard that Massachusetts 
raised anything but men?" was Mr. King's quick 
reply. Men are the princixDal things to raise, was 
his notion. Men are the important resources of a 



THE YOlttfG MAH AKD HIS POLITICS. &S 

nation, no doubt. And it is not the number of 
men, but the quality. And the quality depends 
on their intelligence, high-mindedness, loyalty to 
honor, duty, humanity. So politics has for its 
aim the production of a right-minded community. 
It deals with mind, character, the usefulness of 
life, and the things that promote them. The 
politics which is so conducted as to produce the 
best people, is the best politics. Politics is to 
diminish the evil and increase the good of a peo- 
ple. It operates against evil and for good. It 
is like the farmer who destroys weeds and vermin, 
and cultivates his good crops. Politics is national 
husbandry. To neglect the great farm and let it 
be overrun with evil growths is one of the mis- 
takes into which politicians fall. It is resources 
in good and not evil that politics legitimately 
works for. To enrich the country in good things 
is the great aim. 

The last point in this grand definition of politics 
is, "The preservation and improvement of their 
morals." Not simply the preservation but the 
improvement of their morals. Here in clear words 
the moral element in politics is stated. Indeed 
the whole definition is moral in tone. It is a bit 
of moral philosophy. It would have politics take 
hold of public life with a moral grip. And this 
is the great needful thing. Our public interests 
are abounding with great moral questions which 



84 LOOKING FORWAftD FOU YOUNG MEN* 

cannot be settled except on principles of rectitude. 
Palliatives and compromises and evasions will not 
do. They demand honest, direct, righteous treat- 
ment. And the righteous settlement of many of 
these questions would give us a new country and 
a new age of the world. After all, there is no in- 
terest of the people with which politics has to 
do, so important as morality. Rectitude of life is 
the great thing. No fallacy ever stated in words 
is greater than that politics has nothing to do 
with morality. Indeed morality, right conduct 
among the people, obedience to all good laws and 
principles, is the great aim of politics. Through 
such conduct it aims to secure national safety, 
peace and prosperity. 

A country like ours cannot afford to neglect the 
great concerns of moral life. We have a contin- 
ual inflow of the ignorant and immoral elements 
of European society, cast upon us every year, and 
it behooves wise Americans to see to it that our 
politics shall be kept to their true uses, of bene- 
fitting the people morally as well as materially. 
And our young men fail in a great American duty, 
if they do not equip themselves with the highest 
wisdom and best principles of political science. 



THE YOUNG MAN AXD HIS POLITICS NO. 2. 85 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS POLITICS NO. 2. 

Haying considered Webster's definition of pol- 
itics, and politics in its best and true sense, in the 
previous chapter, the subject will not be fully- 
treated without considering it in its lower aspects, 
to which the present chapter will be given. It 
has come to . be the common thought that politics 
is corrupt and corrupting. Not a few people keep 
aloof from it on that account. It is offered as a 
reason why women should have nothing to do with 
it, because it is debasing. Ministers are counselled 
to keep aloof from it lest they fall into its contami- 
nations. And not a few of them play shy of all 
political questions and actions in the fear of los- 
ing favor with some of their parishioners of differ- 
ent partisan affiliations. This is on the ground 
that Christian men are not manly enough to tol- 
erate opinions on civil matters different from their 
own. There is certainty a degradation of mind 
wrought here either in the minister, or his people, 
that such a thought should be entertained. It is 
the minister's office to teach and enforce all duties, 



86 LOOKING FORWARD FOE YOUNG MEN. 

to teacli and enforce truth on all subjects involved 
in the practical life of men ; if on the subject of 
politics he is restrained, there is something wrong 
either ia politics, or the people. Literary, schol- 
arly men and laymen devoted to religious voca- 
tions, are held from politics from fear of its evil 
influence. The strongest jaeople morally are 
counselled not to meddle with politics lest it may 
hurt their characters. Only those of easy morals 
and uncertain character are supposed to be safe 
in the tainted atmosphere of political wrangling. 
This bad opinion of politics has certainly come to 
be common, and there is reason for it. There is 
much that passes for politics that is bad, and on 
this account good men have become disgusted and 
kept away. On this account our great lexicogra- 
pher has given a second definition of politics, that 
is, a definition of politics in its degradation, which 
is this: "The management of a political party; 
the advancement of a candidate to office ; artful, 
or dishonest management to secure the success of 
political measures ; political trickery." 

It is a burning disgrace that the conduct of 
public affairs, the management of the people's na- 
tional interests, as important and dignified as falls 
to the lot of mortals to engage in, should ever 
have been so basely prostituted to personal and 
corrupt aims, as to justify such a definition. But 
such has been the fact. Politics has been and is 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS POLITICS NO. 2. 87 

prostituted. History is full of it. And so his- 
tory is full of the fact that all good things have 
been prostituted to evil. Business is a good thing, 
but how many bad men use it for evil ends. Money 
is a good thing, but how fearfully it is prostituted 
by many whose lives are base. Marriage is a good 
thing, but under Mohammedanism, Mormonism, 
and other corrupt systems, it has been prostituted 
to oppression and the aggrandizement of the few. 
It has been made a fearful cruelty. Religion is a 
good thing, but nothing has been more debased 
to evil aims and made the occasion of more fraud, 
chicanery and wickedness. How fearful have been 
the great religious wars ! We hope we have out- 
grown them now, but it has been a bitter experi- 
ence in growing to our present just and tolerant 
sentiments. No wise man proposes to throw away, 
or be indifferent to these good things, because the 
evil-minded have used them for bad purposes. No 
more should we throw away politics because it has 
been misused. We must have business, money, 
marriage. We cannot have civilization, or good 
society without them. So we must have politics. 
It is a necessity. Public affairs must be attended 
to. And there must be method, order, deliber- 
ation in their conduct. This is the science of 
politics. And as public affairs grow large and 
complicated the need of talent, comprehensive 
judgment and business skill will be increased, In, 



88 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

their increase will come temptation, great incen- 
tives to personal ambition and benefit, and so to 
the prostitution of politics. This is the rot of 
good fruit— the sour curd of good milk, which 
has come by putting weak men where strong were 
needed, by giving false principles the place of true 
ones. 

A little attention to this definition of false poli- 
tics will show how the falsity works to deceive. 
The first statement is, "The management of a 
political party." This goes upon the idea that 
men are cattle to be managed, or machines to be 
skilfully manipulated. It is a notion that de- 
grades manhood. Parties are made of men, and 
when you say they are to be managed by politi- 
cians, you sink the men in them to a species of 
servitude. Soldiers are managed by their com- 
manding officer. They are tools of their com- 
mander. His will directs them. His word is their 
law. They may have no opinions or plans of their 
own ; no voice, or action of their own. They merge 
themselves in him — are lost in his importance. 
The virtue of a soldier is to be an extended and 
obedient part of his commander — his hand and 
force executing the commander's will. But how 
about the personal man in the subservient soldier? 
He is sunk out of sight, has become a nonentity. 
His opinions are surrendered, his will is suspended, 
Iris manhood put to sleep. His muscles and phy- 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS POLITICS NO.*2. 89 

sical power are left intact to serve his commander, 
but no mind to serve himself. This, any one can 
see, is a degraded condition of the man, which is 
justifiable only in emergencies of public danger. 
It is not a natural condition to be kept as a legiti- 
mate part of civilized life. In just so much as 
parties become bodies of inert and obedient men, 
managed by accepted leaders, and led to serve 
their purposes, are they subversive of the liberty 
and dignity of manhood and the good of intelli- 
gent communities. Military necessities are usu- 
ally of short duration, but politics is a constant 
necessity for the conduct of public affairs. In 
politics the individual man is the prime factor, as 
in business, science, philosophy, or learning. In 
politics each man is a thinker for himself, a stu- 
dent of all the questions involved. And parties 
are formed in politics by many men thinking alike 
on the questions of the hour. It is by much think- 
ing alike that genuine and useful political parties 
are formed and not by non-thinking. Such par- 
ties are self -managed —that is, by mutual agree- 
ment and not by scheming leaders. Genuine par- 
ties too are changeable with the changing interests 
of the times, and not always the same as non- 
thinking would keep them. Parties are often 
useful for a time to destroy an old evil, or work 
a needed reform, but are often dangerous if they 
outlive the occasion of their organization. Per- 



90 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN". 

petual parties are perpetual menaces to the public 
good, because they are liable to beget partisan 
interests, and pride. As a rule parties go to the 
bad rather than improve with age, because the 
pride of party is commoner than the Tightness of 
opinion. There are more men capable of partisan 
pride than of sound thinking. There are more 
men led by partisanship than by righteous mo- 
tives. Hence, the great evil in old parties comes 
to be partisanship. With the age of a party, par- 
tisanship is liable to rule it instead of principle, 
because men fall into ruts easier than into the new 
issues of changing time. Partisanship is afraid 
of new questions and ideas, clings to the old and 
throws the conduct of parties into the hands of 
leaders whose chief interest is party triumph or 
personal ends. In a country like this, new issues 
are constantly coming to the front because an en- 
terprising people are always pushing on to some- 
thing better. This calls for enterprising parties to 
constantly renew their life by grappling with the 
new things and keeping abreast of the new times. 

Parties like men grow conservative with age, 
unless new ideas and new blood renew them. And 
as they grow conservative they usually grow par- 
tisan and narrow. And as they grow partisan 
they usually fall into the leadership of the un- 
worthy and self-seeking. 

Partisanship, therefore, is one of the things to 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS POLITICS NO. 2. 91 

be dreaded in polities. Like sectarianism in relig- 
ion it withers every virtue. Young men do well 
to keep open eyes to this great danger and not 
fall into the absurd idea that politics is the man- 
agement of a political party. Give more heed to 
the principles of a party than to its management. 
No party is worthy without worthy principles. 
JNo party which has been worthy continues so un- 
less it does the worthy work of its time. Parties 
must know their dangers and shun them as men 
do, or they become unworthy of use. 

Another part of the definition of bad politics 
is, "The advancement of a candidate to office." 
Among partisans the election of the candidate is 
the principal thing. " Our man " as they call him, 
is what they are after. They have no principles 
to honor, no good of the community to serve, no 
cause of right to promote, but only men to elect. 
Their method is to get votes, honorably if they 
can, but any way rather than not get them. This 
is the method that corrupts elections, disgraces 
politics, disgusts good men and cripples the coun- 
try in the best things it proposes. 

The further definition is, "Artful, or dishonest 
management to secure the success of political 
measures." The management of the party and the 
election of the candidate, are of course followed 
by skilful contrivances to carry measures. Here 
comes in the art of demagogues, the linesse of ad* 



9.2 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

vocates, the lobbying and trickery of partisans, 
the bribery of money and the pressure of base 
motives. This is the held of " political trickery " 
with which Mr. Webster closes his definition of 
politics in its bad use. 

It is pitiable and disgraceful that such politics 
exists. And the Avorst of it all is that decent men 
lend themselves to it, that even good men get 
drawn into it by their love of their party. There 
is an infatuation in politics, its cliques, its prom- 
ises, its honors, that lead men into strange rela- 
tions and actions. 

Young men ought to know all these dangers 
and be prepared by their knowledge, to resist 
them. And they should know too that this is a 
great field in which adroit, cunning, and talented 
men play their games of personal greed and am- 
bition. Knaves and rascals are here with oily 
tongues and wily manners to deceive the very 
elect, with the base multitudes of the ignorant and 
grovelling to serve their purposes. Surely this side 
of politics has a forbidding asx>ect. It is a foul pit. 
And yet we must have politics. It is one of the 
necessities of reimblican civilization. It has in 
hand the great affairs of the country— even the 
* great American republic, which if wisely con- 
ducted is likely to grow to embrace the continent,' 
the birth and freedom of which cost treasures of 
patriot money and blood. Read the story of colo- 



THE YOUKG MAX AXD HIS POLITICS XO. 2. 93 

nial oppression and wrong suffered by our fore- 
fathers at the hands of tyrant king and venal 
parliament. Read of their patient sufferings for 
years, of their commerce restricted, their manufac- 
tures prohibited, their representation denied, their 
laws vetoed, their petitions spurned, their growth 
prevented, their success thwarted to keep them in 
colonial dependence — one of the worst cases of 
bad politics on record. Then read the story of 
their healthy growth, their wisdom, courage, loy- 
alty, their announcement of great principles, their 
puritan morality, their public spirit, their devout 
trust in Providence and faithful love of English 
law and liberty. From 1761 to 1783, the history 
of the American colonies is richer in great princi- 
ples, men and deeds, than any other portion of 
purely human history. It is of marvellous inter- 
est. It reads like chapters from some divine trag- 
edy. The contrast between England and her col- 
onies, between the mother and her daughters, is 
so marked that the mother seems robed in black 
and the daughters in white. This is a portion of 
our history that all American young men should 
be familiar with. Its characters are among the 
finest in the world. James Otis, Samuel and John 
Adams, Joseph Warren, John Hancock, John 
Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, 
George Clinton, Patrick Henry, George Washing- 
ton and many more, have left records of charac- 



94 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

ters and lives tliat will only grow more luminous 
with the passing of the ages. They stand among 
the noblest of their kind, great, broad-minded, 
true-hearted, strong-headed men, the story of whose 
greatness and nobility should be familiar to every 
American youth. The birth-throes of this nation 
ought to throb in every young heart. We are 
only a century from those great times, and yet 
many of our youth scarcely ever read of them — 
know of them only as the misty things of the past. 
It is amazing to see how those men understood 
what they were doing — foresaw the greatness of 
the work they had in hand — and knew how out of 
the great nation they were founding, the whole 
world was to get liberty, law and blessing. They 
often in their great flights of speech, picture the 
world as we now see it — all nations lighting their 
torches of knowledge and political life at our 
flame. 

This great country which cost so much, which 
is so much, which promises to be so much more, 
and which is the outgrowth of righteous and en- 
during principles, is soon to come into the hands 
of its youth. Its homes, its business, its property, 
schools, churches, governments, politics, and in- 
stitutions, are all to become the possession of those 
whose minds are just opening to these great reali- 
ties. What will they do with this magnificent 
patrimony? Will they keep it up to its high tide 



THE YOUXG MAX AXi) HIS POLITICS XO. 2. 95 

of growing excellencies, or will they by their in- 
competency and unfaithfulness let it cToavii into 
the mire of greed and lust where so many nations 
have gone to ruin ? Shall the grand things secured 
to us by the great men of the past century, be cor- 
rupted and lost by the small men of this, or shall 
the rising young men see their opportunity and 
rise to it to make of their country a still grander 
field for the enterprise and life of a great people? . 
Our young men ought to be politicians. What- 
ever else they are, their country is of first interest 
to them. It gives tone and character to every- 
thing else. Home, business, profession, all inter- 
ests take much of their value from the laws, poli- 
tics, government of the country. They should 
remember that this is the people's country. We 
have no ruling class. The people make and un- 
make their rulers — make and unmake their laws. 
The people through their chosen servants conduct 
all public affairs. It is for the people— all the 
people to be acquainted with the essential princi- 
ples of our laws and the administration of our 
government, and to see to it that the great public 
interests are wisely and faithfully conducted. 
Gov. Gage of Massachusetts, King George's gover- 
nor before the Revolution, complained to the par- 
liament that there was no managing a people 
when every man in the community studied law. 
That, he said, was the case in Massachusetts. The 



96 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

fact was that almost every man knew his rights 
as a British subject. The whole people were 
studying their rights. They became political econ- 
omists — a community of practical philosophers. 
What John Adams said on the day of the declara- 
tion of independence, was literally true, " Britain 
has been filled with folly, America with wisdom." 
These were what gave us our independence, our 
republic, our grand institutions, the folly of Brit- 
ain and the wisdom of America. If true, what a 
grand saying. And it was true. It was the wis- 
dom of great intelligence and moral worth. That 
is the wisdom we need now — the wisdom a repub- 
lic always needs, the wisdom of an intelligent and 
virtuous people. It is the purpose of our common 
schools, to carry education to all the people that 
they may be kings and queens in the sense of 
ruling themselves through the instrumentality of 
republican governments. 

Let our young men become wise in the princi- 
ples of human justice and rights before the law, 
the principles of honest statecraft, of righteous 
voting and legislation, of the high practical and 
moral uses of the government, and they will see to 
it that the government suffers no detriment at 
their hands. It is vastly important that the young 
men understand their duty to their country and 
have the moral force to carry it into practical ser- 
vice. If they do not, its great interests will suffer 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS POLITICS NO. 2. 97 

from their incapacity. The country cannot take 
care of itself. They must do it, or it will not be 
done. The present actors will soon be gone. It 
is the young men of to-day, or nobody, that will 
carry on these great affairs. The government is 
but a machine — a method of serving its people, 
and will always be what they make it. Let it 
increase in efficiency by the continued increase of 
the wisdom and virtue of its peojrie. 
7 



98 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEET. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS MONEY. 

" The love of Money is the root of all evil," was 
said by the Great Teacher. The force of this 
teaching w r ent against money as a dangerous 
thing; for it was easy to carry the stress of the 
teaching over from the love of money to money 
itself, and so call money the root of all evil. The 
point in the teaching is against the love of money. 
Money is left in its innocence, as harmless in itself 
as a buttercup, or a diamond. It is only in the 
bad uses to which men put it that it ever becomes 
evil. In modern times there has come another 
saying which men like better — " Money makes the 
mare go," the meaning of which is, that money is 
a motive power of great force among men — a dom- 
inant pow r er. The two statements are not so dif- 
ferent as they seem. They are only different ways 
of setting forth a fact important for everybody to 
know, that money is so potent an agency in this 
world that it has a controlling influence in its 
affairs. Go into the busy marts of business— into 
the industries of men along the thoroughfares of 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS MONEY. 99 

exchange and travel, into the offices of the pro- 
fessions, the halls of learning, the churches, the 
courts, the headquarters of official power, and 
everywhere it will be seen that money represents 
and serves all these important agencies. Go 
among the evil things that annoy and disgrace 
men — the things that corrupt society, ruin nations 
and make hard and wretched the ways of human- 
ity, and money is there equally the great agency 
in promoting the evil of the world. It seems to 
be true that money moves the world, simply be- 
cause it is the representative of all values, real, or 
fictitious. 

It is apparent at once that money has no moral 
quality — is neither good nor bad. Neither the 
money itself nor the love of it is the root of evil 
only as it is coveted and used for evil purposes. 
The evil is not in the money but in the one who 
covets, or uses it. It is an innocent and very con- 
venient agency for the expression of values in aid 
of exchanges between men. 

Money must be called an invention. There is 
but little intrinsic worth in it. It is nearly use- 
less except for the purposes of traffic; and yet by 
the invention of men, it has been made one of the 
most serviceable utilities of our civilization. It is 
good in itself and is to be sought in just and hon- 
orable ways ; and sought earnestly and with per- 
severance. If it has any moral value it is in its 



100 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEK. 

use, and not in itself. The same dollar can be 
used for charity, or cruelty, for religion, or sin. 
The money that yesterday served an outlaw, may 
to-day serve a saint. Moral character is not in 
money but in the one who uses it. A case illus- 
trative of this is in the history of the struggle of 
the people of the United States for their inde- 
pendence. In that struggle there was one very 
brilliant and for a while useful young man who 
served the cause with much efficiency till his name 
became a tower of strength, and he was promoted 
to giddy heights of honor; and yet in a brief time 
thereafter, he blackened that name with deepest 
disgrace and associated it forever in this country 
with Judas Iscariot. This was Benedict Arnold, 
who attempted to sell his country for a price — 
Arnold, the traitor. He seemed as self-sacrificing, 
honest and zealous for the cause he had espoused, 
as the great patriots of the day; had the confi- 
dence of Washington, the army and country; and 
yet leaped from his high position into the infamy 
of a traitor. And why did he do it? Because he 
did not know the value and use of money. He 
was trusted with important duties with his head- 
quarters in Philadelphia. The glitter of military 
and fashionable life was about him. Society 
courted and flattered him. He lived high and fast ; 
and in a short time got into debt — heavily in debt. 
He could not raise the money to pay, and was 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS MONEY. 101 

looking disgrace in the face. Soon after lie was 
transferred to West Point, near the headquarters 
of the British in New York. The British officers 
had money to buy those they could not conquer 
in the field. Arnold's debts and their ready money 
made the temptation too great for him, and he 
sold himself to them to pay the debts his foolish 
vanity had contracted. He bargained to sell his 
command, it was believed, but the plot was dis- 
covered in season to save the command, while he 
tied to the enemy — a perpetual monument of 
financial incompetency. 

It is one of those cases which occur so often, 
where life is ruined by a failure to understand the 
moral uses of money. It is true that money has 
moral as well as material relations and involves 
character as well as comfort and show. 

The same history that gives us Arnold's infamy, 
gives us the story of Benjamin Franklin's noble 
services to his country and the cause of popular 
government. In detailing the elements of his great 
character, his rigid economy, practiced through all 
his life, at kings' courts, as well as in humble 
stations, is spoken of to his credit, as giving 
beauty and strength to the republican simplicity 
of his life. This is said of him, that "he prac- 
tised economy that he might be independent" 
To be independent of monied obligations which 
one cannot meet, and all the embarras^nents and 



102 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

anxieties which come with them, puts one in a 
position to make the best of himself. The poor 
debtor enmeshed in obligations is like the fly en- 
trapped in the web of the spider. The more he 
struggles the more he is bound and the more he 
wastes his strength in vain. 

Franklin's maxims of practical life, so simple, 
w T ise and moral, that everybody at once sees their 
excellence, gained him the title of philosopher. 
And putting his own maxims into iDractice made 
him one of the greatest as w r ell as worthiest of 
the great men of the world. 

Here are two men of marked ability and com- 
manding positions before the w r orld, committed to 
a great cause, each able to do grand things for his 
country and mankind and build his own fame 
higher than the stars ; in a new country, poor and 
struggling for an existence, and for the equal 
rights of all its people; its soldiers half -fed, half- 
clothed and half -paid ; the most of its people suf- 
fering great deprivations to secure nationality and 
freedom; one of them depriving himself of all lux- 
uries and limiting his expenses to actual necessi- 
ties, though serving his country in foreign courts ; 
the other using lavishly all the best things he 
could get and piling up debts in the presence of 
his famishing soldiers. A sharper contrast can 
scarcely be found between two great men serving 
a great cause. And the contrast is chiefly in the 



THE YOUXG MAN AXD HIS MONEY. 103 

very matter which this chapter is urging young 
men to consider as vitally important, which is the 
right use of money. By having false ideas on this 
subject, Arnold went to ruin and made the foulest 
blot on our revolutionary history. By having 
right ideas and practices on it, Franklin became 
one of America's noblest men and one of the 
world's greatest philosophers. Such men are ex- 
amples for young men to study, one as a warning, 
the other as a guide. 

When young men are well along in the evening 
snadows of a long life, they will have learned that 
the practical questions of money and its uses, are 
among the very real and important ones needful 
to be well settled in every-day life. And they will 
find too that their early settlement is a good part 
of success. A failure here is a failure almost 
everywhere. The unfinancial man usually fails in 
his intellectual and moral purposes as he does in 
practical affairs. No young man has any right 
to be a spendthrift in his young days and expect 
to become a financier and wise user of money after 
that. Prodigality, improvidence, carelessness of 
money obligations, are seldom effectually repented 
of. As a man begins in these things, he is very 
likely to continue. As the boy begins with the 
use of pennies, the man is likely to continue with 
the use of dollars. The lesson early learned in the 
use of money is not readily forgotten, Neither 



104 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEK. 

becoming very rich nor very poor is apt to change 
this matter. 

Everybody finds poverty an uncomfortable com- 
panion to live with. Whether in the kitchen, 
parlor, or out in the world, it is disagreeable. The 
old saying that " Poverty is no disgrace, but it is 
mighty inconvenient," is accepted as true by all 
the unfinancial. But is it true? In most cases in 
this country poverty is the result of evil habits, or 
indolence, or carelessness in the use of money, 
which a right sense of moral obligation might 
have corrected. As a rule, poverty is a disgrace. 
Americans ought to be ashamed of being poor ex- 
cept in cases of misfortune. Take any ten healthy 
boys in the community, a portion of them will be 
poor, and some of them will be well off. Why 
this difference, except that some are careful in 
the use of money, and some are not? In most 
cases there is blame in being poor. Those who 
are not poor make the necessary sacrifices to be- 
come financially independent. Good financial con- 
ditions are attainable as are good intellectual, or 
moral conditions. Poverty must be classed with 
ignorance and wickedness as an evil to be over- 
come by the needful efforts and sacrifices. And 
those w T ho do not make the necessary efforts and 
sacrifices are to be blamed for their poverty as for 
their ignorance, or wickedness. There is a mawk- 
ish sentiment in relation to poverty as there is in 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS MONEY. 105 

relation to drunkenness, as though the poor and 
the drunken are to be pitied more than blamed, to 
be condoned rather than punished. Sometimes 
they are, and so are all sinners. When misfor- 
tunes rather than faults have been the occasions, 
pity and pardon come in to do their work of 
mercy. On all just principles of philosophy and 
morality men are to be held responsible for their 
poverty. There are three words that express the 
conditions of financial competency; they are in- 
dustry, economy and perseverance. Industry keeps 
one at the work of earning, accumulating money; 
economy saves it, makes it self-accumulating, in- 
terest-bearing, profit- earning; perseverance holds 
one steadily, all days, and all years, to the earning 
and economizing work. The three acting together 
almost invariably overcome poverty. 

The great majority of American men are not 
rpoor. They have secured their competency by 
their own efforts and sacrifices. They ha ve earned ; 
made their earnings earn, and kept on doing it. 
In this work they have made themselves and their 
country what they are. The vast accumulations 
of property in our farms, homes, shops, mills, high- 
ways, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, cities, in- 
stitutions and industries, over the whole area of 
this young country, are the products of the earn-, 
ings of the thrifty who have fought poverty face 
to face and conquered it. This property has no1 



106 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOU^G MEN". 

come by luck but by pluck. It lias not come by 
idleness and wasting, but by work and economy. 
It has not come by going to bed every night as 
poor as in the morning, or getting up every morn- 
ing as poor as the night before. Men have earned 
and saved and money has been accumulated. And 
it has all been done little by little. It has all been 
earned and saved penny by penny, just as we must 
all earn our money if we have any. Money does 
not come in mountains but in molehills. As the 
rivers come from springs, so do the great estates 
from the little earnings. 

One of the great troubles with young men is 
that they have not learned the power of pennies. 
They think of rich men as having got their riches 
in great sums, rather than penny by penny. They 
think it is small business to earn and save money 
by the penny. They waste freely and save with 
reluctance their pennies. They do not believe in 
resisting poverty with pennies. They see no riches 
in pennies. They are the poor man's money. But 
really, the light estimate of pennies keeps many a 
man poor. 

Money is one of the great instrumentalities in 
the conduct of the affairs of this world; and on 
this account it is more likely than any other, to 
be perverted to evil uses. We have had in this 
country two great illustrations of the power of 
money for evil. One of them is now happily in 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS MONEY. 107 

the past. They are slavery and intemperance. 
Slavery for many years dominated this country — 
dictated its presidents, its congress and its judi- 
ciary, as well as its domestic and foreign policies. 

It was king in Republican America, How did 
it get and hold this power? By the money there 
was in it, or supposed to be in it. It was only 
when moral and patriotic considerations rose above 
mercenary ones that this evil power was destroyed. 
Now it has become clear to all that the supposed 
wealth-power in slavery was fictitious — that it was 
really a poverty-engendering institution and was 
making the nation poor instead of rich, especially 
that portion of it where it existed. Its riches 
wrung from the toil of unpaid kibor, went into the 
hands of a scattered few, who not having earned 
it, knew not how to use it, nor the principles of 
domestic and social economy by which families 
and communities thrive. The most that could be 
said for slavery in its palmiest days, was that it 
made a few rich, while the many remained in 
hopeless poverty, the slave in degraded servitude, 
and the section of country where it existed, in a 
general paralysis. This perversion of the money 
power was a mighty evil, reaching every interest 
in individual and social life. 

Intemperance, or the liquor traffic, now holds a 
similar position in our country. It dictates our 
politics, officials and legislative action. Repub* 



108 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

lican America is on its knees again to a monied 
power. The money in the liquor traffic is its chief 
source of power. It controls votes, legislation, 
judiciaries, politics, because it controls money. 
But like slavery, it accumulates money in the 
hands of a few; and like slavery it impoverishes 
the many to enrich the few, takes the earnings of 
hard-w T orked labor without giving an equivalent 
and leaves its defrauded victims in a miserable 
servitude to vice and poverty. Like slavery it is 
a breeder of poverty. It produces nothing good, 
but immense evils. Those into whose hands it 
carries money are incompetent to its legitimate 
uses to benefit and build up society, because of 
the moral perversity that comes to them with its 
accumulation. Perverted money works perver- 
sion of mind and conscience. Stolen money has a 
curse upon it. Liquor-filched money has a worse 
curse upon it, for the woe and crime and sin it 
produces are chargeable to it. ~No evil in our 
community is at ail to be compared to the liquor 
traffic and use sustained chiefly by perverted 
money. 

The fearfulness of the two great evils referred 
to ought to put every young man upon his guard 
against coveting money gained in any false or 
crooked way. Such money is u blood-money." 
It is cursed in the getting. It is not money gained 
anyhow that we have any right to want, or that 



The youkg max axd his moxey. 109 

will do us any good. It is clean money that will 
serve us well. Money that stands for fraud, oj)- 
pression, or fellow-suffering, is to be held as the 
price of crime. Such money is to be spurned, 
rather than accepted on any conditions. 

The honorable pursuits of society are all ar- 
ranged upon the idea of mutual helpfulness. They 
open to us the sources of independence and plenty. 
In them we should find employment for our ener- 
gies. The useful employments give useful money, 
the hurtful employments hurtful money. 

Money is good for us in part because it is good 
for us to earn it. The value of it is in earning it. 
To pick it up as we can gravel in the river bed, is 
not to find it useful. It must be honestly earned 
to render us good service. Suppose a young man 
can play a shrewd game of cards at the gaming 
table and make a fortune, shall he do it? JVo, a 
thousand times no ! Why? Because it is not a 
legitimate business ; because it robs others to get it 
himself; because it is the business of gamesters 
and robbers, and not of honest men ; because such 
money is corrupted in the getting and its posses- 
sion is a moral debasement. It is mean, even to 
covet money in such a way. There is character to 
be made in making money. There is virtue and 
noble manhood in the right style of money-mak- 
ing. Out upon money corrupted in the getting. 
Abominate the money made in ruining humanity. 



110 LOOKIXG FORWARD FOR YOUJs"G MEtf. 

Another point shonld be noted. It is not the 
great fortunes that we need, bnt the means to 
meet onr reasonable wants — enough to give inde- 
pendence of want and misfortune— competency. 
There is moral danger in great riches. The temp- 
tation to pride in great gains, to covetousness, to 
arrogance, to indifference, to human striving and 
need, to hardness of heart, is great. The tempta- 
tion too, to live for money, as the miser does, or 
to become the servant of money as many rich men 
do, is great. 

The true notion of business and money -getting, 
is to be so employed as to live independent of 
others' help and make our business and money, as 
w r ell as ourselves, helpful to others. Money-get- 
ting should not be thought of as a selfish scram- 
ble, but as a useful employment, not less beneficial 
to the world than to ourselves. 

We should begin early to act upon the right 
ideas of money and money -getting, that we may 
be trained to self-help and the activities and vir- 
tues which give us judgment, industry, economy 
and integrity. 

It is manly to set one's self bravely about the 
affairs of the world in some honorable calling, with 
a view to being an independent actor among men. 
It is manly to cultivate the qualities which make 
a successful man in the conduct of the business 
side of life. - It will be found at last that success 



THE YOrXG MAX AXD HI? MOXET. Ill 

even in virtue and religion, will be found to have 
a very practical basis. A full man, like a dia- 
mond, is many-sided, and must be right all round, 
and many of the sides are ground to their best re 
flection in the good conduct of business affairs. 



112 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS TIME. 

"Time is money" is an old saying. But this 
only begins to tell the truth. Time is more than 
money. It is learning, wisdom, character, success, 
power, when put to its right uses. Time makes 
the men who 1111 the ages with worth, the institu- 
tions that enrich the world, the epochs that glorify 
history. All great things are the product of time. 
Longfellow has written a volume of practical wis- 
dom in one line : 

" Learn to labor and to wait." 

Time is the element of labor which gives it suc- 
cess. The efficiency of labor is in stroke after 
stroke long continued. "A continual dropping 
w r ears a stone." It is not only the dropping but 
its continuance that does the wearing. It is not 
only labor but its continuance that works success. 
Spurts of labor, spasmodic smartness, lightning 
flashes of work are not enough. It is the spurt 
kept up, the smartness long drawn out, the light- 
ning made perpetual, that accomplishes creditable 
things. Minutes are little things and small in 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS TIME. 113 

their results, but minutes held to good uses till 
they make hours, and hours held on to till they 
grow into years, and the years made fruitful till 
they ripen into ages, accomplish the great things 
in human history. 

A few years ago some one started a complaint 
against our American colleges that they failed to 
make great men as did the old colleges. And all 
the papers took it up and a ringing complaint 
went the rounds that our colleges had degenerated 
because they produced no more giants. But after 
all the papers had become hoarse with their 
growling, some considerate editor thoughtfully 
said, " Gentlemen, you are too soon with your com- 
plaints. Colleges are to prepare men to grow and 
do ; but no men are heard from as great men in 
any broad, national sense, till they have been out 
of college, at least twenty-five years; after that 
they mature into greatness and become widely 
known." Then he cited the few truly great men 
of the present century in this country and Europe, 
noted when they left college and when they at- 
tained greatness in any generally accepted sense, 
and showed that time was a very important factor 
in the development of greatness. 

But Longfellow's gem of wisdom asks us to wait 

as well as labor, that is, wait while we labor. 

There is time spent in waiting, not time spent in 

idleness, but in labor. We must labor without 

8 



114 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

expecting immediate results. The results of labor 
are slow in coming. Seeds are slow in germinat- 
ing and slow in their early growths. 

This lesson of the value and true importance of 
time in the make-uj) of our lives and successes, is 
one of the most difficult for the young to learn. 
Youth is the ardent season. It is full of fire and 
zeal. Its imagination is active. It does not want 
to wait. It is in hot haste for action and attain- 
ment. It tires of old-fogy slowness, and covets 
quick returns and striking results in every enter- 
prise. Yet the old law holds good that time will 
have its slow way in all its great results. 

All the short cuts to greatness are accidental 
and not legitimate. They are not to be copied, or 
to be cited as examples. There are some cases of 
quick success that have the appearance of being 
secured by some smartness, or short-hand skill, but 
examine them closely and they usually prove the 
old law that time will have its slow hand on all 
truly great and good results. The cases of suc- 
cess by lottery luck, are mere chance affairs and 
illustrate no law, or principle. There is the case 
of Charlotte Bronte, who while yet a poor young 
woman, even a poor, timid, country girl, who had 
never been but a little way from her father's rural 
home, had never worn anything better than a 
gingham dress, who woke one morning to find 
herself great, to find all London, yea, all the great 



THE YOUXG MAS? AXD HIS TIME. 115 

men and women of England half-crazy over her 
and her work, and all in a hot dispute as to 
whether she was a man or woman, as to whether 
she was some well-known author under a nam de 
plume, or some new star come with a flash into 
the zenith of the literary firmament. She had 
written Jane Eyre and after offering the work to 
the most of the noted publishers of London and 
having it refused, she at length found one, Mr. 
Campbell, an obscure publisher, who would ven- 
ture on the dangerous experiment of publishing 
the work of an unknown author. She had written 
under the name of Currer Bell. The publisher 
had addressed his letters to Mr. Currer Bell, and 
they had been answered b}^ Currer Bell. He had 
no reason to think anything else only that the 
author of Jane Eyre was a man. But some of 
the women readers thought they saw the touches 
of a woman's hand not likely to have been written 
by a man. But still the general thought was that 
Currer Bell was a man, and the literary magnates 
soon insisted that he must come to London to give 
them the pleasure of his acquaintance. They 
must know so great an author and he must be 
admitted to their circle of honor. Mr. Campbell 
pressed Mr. Bell to come to London, accept the 
hospitalities of his home, and give the literati of 
the great metropolis the pleasure of his acquaint- 
ance. So the arrangement was made. Miss Bronte 



116 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOU^G MfiK, 

went to great, frightful London and was taken by 
the stage to Mr. Campbell's door. She rang the 
bell and was ushered into the waiting-room with 
her heart almost in her mouth. Soon a gentleman 
came in and introduced himself as Mr. Campbell, 
" and I am Currer Bell," she replied. He was as- 
tonished beyond measure, but, too much of a gen- 
tleman to be utterly overcome, he made the best 
he could of his embarrassment; brought in his 
wife and family and was soon on easy terms with 
her. The great men were astonished, but all came 
with their hats in their hands to pay their respects 
to the genius which had produced Jane Eyre — 
even the great, burly, bearish Carlyle came and 
was tame and docile and complimentary. 

This sudden popular triumph, one of the great- 
est ever produced by any author, had the appear- 
ance of falsifying the common law that greatness 
and success are attained only by long-continued 
efforts. But Miss Bronte's history makes her one 
of the most rigid illustrations of the law. She 
had sacrificed her childhood and youth to study 
reading, meditation and writing. She had strug- 
gled and suffered so much that she was prema- 
turely matured in soul life. She had wrestled with 
all the great questions of the time, theological, 
moral, social, political. Her inner life was a fur- 
nace of great fires of mind, heart and conscience. 
With her mother dead, her father a sort of anchor- 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS TIME. 117 

ite clergyman, shut up in his study, with three 
younger sisters intellectual, conscientious, morbid 
like herself, all given to introspection and writing 
their thoughts for each other; a brother who went 
to bad habits and broke his sisters' hearts; she 
had mused, read, thought, and written and suf- 
fered, till she had a vigorous, positive, incisive, 
original and brilliant mind that had its own views 
of life and all its great questions, and its own 
sharp and powerf ul ways of discussing them. She 
had written several books which had not then 
been published. She and her sisters had some 
years before published a little volume of their 
early poems, but they had not then been much 
read and had not brought them from their obscur- 
ity. So it was true of her that she had labored 
and waited for the power to write Jane Eyre. 

It is always true then that time is one of the 
essential and important elements that enters into 
the make-up of strong mind, mature judgment, 
worthy character and notable success. 

2. It is an old and true saying that " whatever 
is worth doing at all is worth doing well." Now 
it is equally true that nothing can be done well 
without giving the proper amount of time to it. 
As a young man would you learn a trade, or a 
business, or a profession by which to earn your liv- 
ing, in which to work out a reputable character, and 
make a useful career in the world? "Would you 



118 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

hurry so important a matter as that? cut it short 
in its ripening time, and thus cheat yourself of 
the complete preparation, just to save a little 
time? How common is this suicidal practice. How 
common for young men to think that they have 
not time enough to learn a trade, or study a pro- 
fession well, and so cheat themselves of the very 
power to succeed. Xow more than formerly is 
ample preparation a necessity. Time and money 
and effort put into the preparation, are invest- 
ments which usually pay the best dividends. 
Once men could start in any of the professions and 
work out a kind of success by dint of cheek and 
push, because professional men w 7 ere few, and the 
people but little informed in such matters ; but now 
the professions are full and well equipped, and those 
who would succeed in them must do it largely by 
an efficient preparation. The day is over for half- 
lawyers, half -doctors, half -clergymen, or half -me- 
chanics, farmers, or business men, to make any 
marked success. This is the day of skilled labor, 
of intelligent professional service. The half -pre- 
pared men are cheats. They cheat themselves and 
employers. It is common for young men to feel 
that they have not time enough for a complete 
educational outfit for a profession, and so they 
take some short cut to a profession, either by 
taking some easy course in college and beginning 
professional studies, or keeping from college al- 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS TIME. 119 

together. They get but a smattering of the things 
they do study, some half -knowledge, and with it 
some half -development of mind and habits of half- 
investigation which go with them through life. 
They get minds full of fog which are in danger of 
never clearing up to clear perceptions. Thus half- 
equipped for any place or calling, they go lame 
and hobbling on to the far-off end, learning when 
it is too late, to regret their mistake in not taking 
the hardest and fullest course of preparatory study. 
It is getting to be very common for large boys 
not contemplating a profession, to skip from the 
high school to some penny-catching employment, 
and thus go into business life with the merest 
smattering of an education, to be sham men 
ashamed of their ignorance all along their careers. 
They fancy that they are short of time, when they 
have all the time allotted to anybody. This dodg- 
ing the high school is the merest boy's play. There 
is nothing manly, or sensible in it. The wisdom 
of the past has given the American boys the high 
school as the people's college. It is adapted to 
the minds and needs of' the people to prepare them 
for citizenship, business, and life's common cares 
and responsibilities. It is for all the boys and it 
is cruelty to themselves and the country for them 
to fail to use it for the most it can possibly be 
worth to them. For the honor of America, for the 
good of the boys that are to be men, let them be 



120 LOOKING FORWAKD FOR YOUNG MEN". 

held to the fall benefits of the high schools ! There 
is time enough after the high school, for a grand 
and successful life, especially if no time is wasted. 

They who waste no time are seldom short of 
time to do everything well which needs to be done 
at all. Wasted time is the bane of many a life. 
It is this more than anything else that cuts short 
preparatory education. Time trifled aAvay, time 
idled away, time fooled away is what deprives 
many a life of success and fills it with shame. 
This is a point of vast moment to many a young 
man. The love of fun and frolic, the craving for 
society, the passion for a good time, so overcome 
many young men of good abilities and intentions, 
as to dissipate their force of character and cripple 
every energy for any great purposes, or note- 
worthy pursuits. Their waste of time will make 
them perpetual weaklings. 

Sir John Lubbock says, " Time is often said to 
fly ; but it is not so much the time that flies ; as 
we that waste it, and wasted time is worse than 
no time at all." 

" I wasted time," says Shakespeare, " and now 
doth time waste me." 

Lord Chesterfield says, " Every moment you now 
lose is so much character and advantage lost; as 
on the other hand, every moment you now emx)loy 
usefully, is so much time wisely laid out at pro- 
digious interest." Dante says: 



THE YOUNG MAX AJXD HIS TIME. 121 

"For who knows most, him loss of time most grieves.*" 
And Faust, 

"Are you in earnest ? seize this very minute, 
What you can do, or think you can, begin it." 

This leads directly to the value of evenings. 
The evening time from six to ten o'clock does more 
of help or harm to young men than any other 
time of the same length. If you know how a 
young man spends his evenings, you can predict 
with tolerable certainty the style of life he will 
live and the degree of his success. The four 
evening hours of each day ruin more young men 
than all the other time of their lives. They are 
the hours for gossiping, riding, idling, dissipating 
time and mind, drinking, gambling, smoking and 
all vicious things. They are not only the waste 
hours, but the wicked hours, in a vast number of 
young lives. They are the dark hours, poison 
hours, dreadful hours to very many. They are 
the hours that make vagabonds, spendthrifts, 
drunkards, criminals, that rill our lock-ups, jails, 
prisons, that torture parents and rob homes. 

On the other hand, they are precious hours for 
those who will use them well. Four evening hours 
of each day, give twenty-four hours each week — 
two full days of twelve hours each, which devoted 
to study or personal improvement, give time 
enough to master the study of mechanics, archi- 



122 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOTOG MEN". 

tecture, civil engineering, drawing, metallurgy, 
short-hand reporting, telegraphy, type-writing, 
medicine, law, or theology ; or pursue any special 
or full course of college studies ; or to read all the 
science, history, or literature any one has need to 
read to be master of any branch of scholarship or 
reading. In proof of this may be cited the case 
of Elihu Burritt, the learned blacksmith. In the 
early part of his life he began the study of the 
ancient languages after his full day's work at his 
trade and at the great disadvantage of having no 
teacher. He pursued his evening studies as faith- 
fully as his day work, and they became his pas- 
time and pleasure in a little while. By the time 
he was fifty he was intelligently familiar with 
about as many languages as he was years old, and 
was probably one of the best linguists of our 
country. He was an independent, successful 
blacksmith by day, and a critical, enthusiastic 
linguist by lamplight. This evening study made 
the last twenty-five years of his life rich in liter- 
ary treasures and gave him the acquaintance of 
scholars in all parts of the world. He became a 
noted author and philanthropist honored as much 
for his worth as [a man, as for his wide scholar- 
ship. If he had spent his evenings as most black- 
smiths do, he would not have been known out of 
his neighborhood, nor have served the world in 
any of its great interests. His evenings made him 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS TIME. 123 

a great and useful man and put his name among 
the honored of his kind. 

Another example, equally noted is forced upon 
us by the excellency of his life and the marked 
success that attended all he did. It is that of 
Peter Cooper who died a few years ago in New 
York City at the ripe age of ninety- three, as much 
honored in the hearts of the American people as 
any man of his time. From one sketch of his life 
the following is cited as illustrating the point in 
hand : 

" Thus deprived of even the meagre opportuni- 
ties of an education then existing, at the age of 
seventeen he was apprenticed to coach-making in 
New York City, at which he continued for four 
years. This period indicated those germinal traits 
that grew into such grandeur and fruitfulness. 
His force of character displayed itself in his re 
sistance of those nightly attractions and seductions 
of the city, and devoting his evenings to useful 
reading and experimenting. With rare wisdom 
for a country youth, he valued the evening hours 
and utilized them to supply his deficiency of edu- 
cation and to train his mental powers for manly 
strife. In this he set his first example to young 
men. The critical hours of the workingman are 
those between sunset and slumber; they deter- 
mine his character and destiny, his victory or de- 
feat. In these hours have been wrought some 



124 LOOKIXG FORWARD FOR YOUXG MEN". 

of the grandest characters on record. Franklin 
the printer, Linnseus the shoemaker, Stephenson 
the miner, Hugh Miller the stone mason, when the 
day was done, consecrated their evenings to study 
and experiment, and the result was Franklin the 
scientist and statesman, Linnpeus the botanist, 
Stephenson the inventor, and Hugh Miller the 
geologist. Mr. Cooper, when other young men 
were in the saloon, or the theatre, w r as training 
his mind for those enterprises which have proved 
most useful to himself and beneficial to mankind. 

The first practical result of these evening studies 
was his invention of a machine for mortising hubs ; 
and his employer being so pleased with him, of- 
fered to build him a shop and establish him in the 
business. This he declined, having a wholesome 
horror of debt, again evincing his force of charac- 
ter • and self-reliance." This is enough for the 
present purpose. It is not needful to follow the 
grand career of success and usefulness, growing 
out of his wise use of his evening hours and all 
his time and powers ; but it was one of the finest 
wrought out by the best men of this world— a 
career of steadily developing character, usefulness 
and fame. He became great, wealthy and good, 
' and grew more and more so all the days of his 
long life. The evening hours, the off-times, as 
w r ell as all times were made to serve him. 

This is the conclusion of this whole matter that 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS TIME. 155 

their use of time makes men. If they use it well 
their lives are successful ; if they put it to ill uses 
they are failures. It is vastly important that men 
learn this great fact early and resolve to use their 
time to the best advantage. ]S"ot great powers 
so much as good sense in their use, gives men 
success. 



126 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS HABITS. 

It has been said that "Men are creatures of 
habit." It has passed into a proverb that " Habit 
is second nature." These sayings indicate a ten- 
dency in us to contract habits. Perhaps habit 
may be called the state of action into which we 
educate ourselves. Certain it is that habit is an 
attained state. We are not born with habits ; we 
do not buy them, or borrow them. They are not 
natural to us. They are not the results of instinct. 
The robin always builds its nest the same way ; 
all robins do. Take a young robin from its nest 
before its eyes are open, and bring it up by hand, 
without its ever seeing a robin's nest, and when it 
wants a nest it will build it in the robin's style of 
architecture, and will build the first time as good 
a nest as ever after. This is instinct. What in- 
stinct is, or how it operates, no one can tell. Other 
birds have other ways of building which they 
seem to know without learning. The beaver is a 
house-builder, but builds unlike any other ani- 
mal, and builds always on the plan of his people, 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS HABITS. 127 

and without knowing how. He does it by instinct. 
The bee lives a short life, under the established 
government of the bee community, builds a house, 
fills it with bread and honey, which nothing else 
living knows how to make, and does everything 
in his busy, brief life by instinct, having never 
learned how. The spider is one of the brightest 
creatures we have about us — a born spinner, and a 
born house-builder, and a born trapper, and yet 
his life is lived almost wholly by instinct. And 
yet instinct is a miracle-worker to us human crea- 
tures. We know nothing about it and can learn 
nothing about it. It seems to be an inward voice, 
or inclination, or power, that directs what to do, 
and how to do it, without premeditation, or 
study. But habit is not instinct* nor does instinct 
have anything to do in its formation. Instinct is 
bright, but habit is dull, slow to learn and slower 
still to unlearn. Thick-headed habit has to do a 
thing many times before it knows how to do it; 
and when it learns how, goes on stolidly doing the 
same thing, good or bad, hurtful or helpful, in 
unteachable obstinacy. Perhaps it may be said 
that habit is the dullard's education. It is what 
he has attained by long drill. It is not attained 
by any forecast, intuition, or brightness, but only 
by round-and-round plodding. Habit is the oj> 
posite extreme from instinct. It is a slowly edu- 
cated, or made condition of action. It does not 



128 LOOKING FOKWAKD FOE YOUNG MEN. 

come suddenly, or even in a brief time, but slowly. 
It takes time to make habits, and not much else. 
But little mind is required; but little common 
sense ; but little heart. Usually the less strength 
of mind, the more strength of habit. And usually 
too, habit increases as virtue diminishes. The 
weaker the man the stouter the habit, is the rule. 
Thought and virtue enter but little into habit. 

It is true that many men of mind form very 
strong habits ; but they do it in a suspension of 
mind, rather than by the use of mind. Mind, 
thinking, personal judgment, do not promote 
habits. A genuine thinker thinks always before 
he acts, and acts always for a reason, and aot by a 
habit of action. Much habitual action, however, 
has a good reason, is the product of well-matured 
conviction. Much in every good life is rational 
habit; still it must be said that that action is 
most excellent which is not habitual, but led on 
by matured though tf ulness. 

Another thing is to be said of habits, that they 
are personal. Every man makes his own habits. 
The farmer's products are not so much his own as 
each man's habits. Character is not more personal, 
than habits. True, others may influence us to 
habits, and parents and teachers may give much 
direction to action; but before maturity comes, 
we may decide and are called upon to decide for 
ourselves what is right and useful for us; and 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS HABITS. 129 

what we accept of early instruction becomes our 
personal matter. If others influence us, it is be- 
cause we make their influence our choice. In any 
view we may take of it, at last it comes to this, 
that our habits, like our characters and conduct, 
are our own. 

If so, then we are responsible for them and their 
influence. They are a part of ourselves, make up 
a part of our weight in the world. They go for so 
much of what we are — they count in our make-up 
— they shadow, or lighten our person, ennoble or 
defame our character. 

If habits are our second nature, they are of im- 
mense importance to us either for good or ill. 
And what is a second nature? It is a nature, or 
custom, or way of action which we make over our 
real nature — a covering, or garment which we pro- 
duce and act in — a nature superinduced over our 
real nature by a continued course of action in one 
direction. Do a thing over and over and over 
again and we come at length to do it without 
thought. When we come to do it without thought, 
it becomes habit. "We learn a trade ; when learned 
much of our work in it becomes habit. We learn 
to play a musical instrument, when the instru- 
ment is mastered, much of our use of it is habit. 
We talk and walk very largely from habit. Our 
manners are largely habitual. We have habits 
of speech, behavior, thought, action and feeling; 



130 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

habits of self-indulgence and abasement, all of 
which are the products of our own activity. So 
much of our life is a matter of habit, that we come 
to be known by our habits. Indeed, our habits 
come to be like our every-day garments — our ex- 
ternal selves chiefly seen by the world. A great 
deal of our outward life is habitual. And this 
fact indicates the importance of looking well to 
our habits. 

Just here comes a matter of special significance 
to youth, which is that the most of our habits 
are formed when we are young. That old saying 
that " it is hard to teach old dogs new tricks," is 
an exact truth. They have their tricks already 
learned and are averse to learning new ones. We 
do not expect old men to undertake new trades. 
Habit-acquiring is peculiar to early years. A 
child brought up in a family where three lan- 
guages were spoken, acquired them all as its 
mother tongues, so completely that it would carry 
on a brisk conversation in them all with three dif- 
ferent persons and not make a mistake of a word 
in either. Another child whose German father 
and English mother each talked his and her own 
language to it, and the child became equally at 
home in both languages, at the age most children 
talk one language well. 

A German father, in middle life, came to this 
country bringing a ten year-old son. The father 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS HABITS. 131 

was an educated man, but lie never learned to 
speak English with any fluency, while his son ac- 
quired it readily, became a literary man, a clergy- 
man, and later on the editor-in-chief of a daily 
newspaper. Such facts show how quickly habits 
of speech are adopted by the young, and how 
slowly by the old. And what is true in relation 
to speech, is equally true in relation to habits of 
appetite, passion, manner and thought. Nearly 
all habits are formed in childhood and youth. 
Who ever knew of the habit of profanity taken 
on in maturity? There are many profane men 
whose tongues cruelly mar our beautiful English, 
hurt the lovers of pure sentiment, and dishonor 
themselves by their coarseness, impoliteness and 
cruelty ; but they all acquired the unmanly habit 
in their boyhood, by listening to the billingsgate 
of rowdyism which had fastened itself to tongues 
which ought never to have been degraded by such 
vulgar speech. The best that can be said for pro 
fanity, is that it is an unmeaning vulgarity, as 
much out of place in civilized society as a boor in 
a literary coterie, or a clown at a funeral. It is 
simply shocking to hear profanity in a community 
which supports schools to teach good English and 
churches to teach good manners. And all the 
more shocking is it when it comes from broad- 
cloth and gold watches, as it too often does. And 
how often are profane men shocked at their own 



132 LOORIKG FORWARD FOR YOtTHG MEtf. 

profanity when their tongues habituated to such 
vulgar speech, blurt out unexpectedly in good 
company, the epithets of the bar-room and the 
gaming table. The habits of this coarse speech 
are a part of the patrimony of evil which the boys 
inherit from a vulgar and imbruited past. Pity 
the boys, that men's tongues should load them 
with such burdens of sj)eech. Have compassion 
on the boys when men fill their ears with this 
lingual slime of the pit. Help the boys when 
such habits are their inheritance from the man- 
hood before them. 

There is the case of John B. Gough, born in 
England in 1817, who came to this country when 
a boy, to show in a frail, yet powerful life, the 
power of early habit and the manly way to deal 
with it. He was a poor boy, who learned the 
book-binding trade. He sj)ent much of his even- 
ing time in taverns and drinking places, and very 
early acquired the habit of intoxication. By the 
time he was twenty-one this habit had got the 
mastery of him, and he so gave himself up to it, 
that young as he was, he became a sot — a ribald 
joker and clown in bar-rooms; poor, ragged, filthy. 
He spent all his earnings in drink and became a 
miserable wreck of young manhood. This tyran- 
nical habit of the appetite which he had allowed 
himself to form in his youth, held him in its firm 
grip, a crushed, bloated, miserable man at twenty- 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS HABITS. 133 

three. His waste of Ms evening hours, had fixed 
him in the grasp of this destroying habit, as such 
waste has thousands of other young men. 

About this time, a good man in Worcester, Mass., 
took pity on him and encouraged him to reform, 
to take the pledge, join a temperance society and 
become a man. With a great struggle and the 
constant help of his new-found friend, he kept his 
pledge and became one of the grand men of his 
time — a great reform orator, who, for forty years 
held the place of a great platform speaker. Few 
have ever surpassed him in power over a popular 
audience. And yet all this time he felt himself in 
the grip of his early habit. He was afraid to trust 
himself in the presence of intoxicating drinks, be- 
cause he knew the old appetite, like a smothered 
volcano, was ready to flame up with the least pro- 
vocation. It was a necessity for him to work all 
the time for the reform of others to keep his own 
reform secure. Two, or three times, it is said, he 
fell away and drank to intoxication, but he soon 
roused himself and went to his good work for 
others with renewed zeal. The fact that the early- 
formed habit never gave up utterly, that this 
made appetite for strong drink could never be un- 
made, but that it staid with him. through life to 
torment him, deform his manhood and keep him 
reminded of his degradation, is terrible to contem- 
plate. 



134 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

Mr. Gough was a grand man; lived a noble life; 
fought a heroic battle against intemperance ; was 
loved and honored in America and England for 
his eminent worth ; but what a grief that he had 
to go round the world publishing his own shame, 
that he had to carry a rebellions appetite all his 
life, and have always the thoughts of a wasted and 
degraded youth. What a memory for a good man 
to have always to torture him! Grand Gough! 
Poor Gough ! He stands in recent history, in the 
memories of multitudes yet living, a beacon of 
warning against the early formation of bad habits. 
How true it is that " a stitch in time saves nine," 
and that " an ounce of prevention is better than a 
pound of cure." Mr. Gough's life-long fight with 
his self-made weakness for liquor, was nothing 
peculiar to him. Thousands on thousands have 
the same experience; only the majority go down 
at last in the fearful battle, victims to an appetite 
and the temptations avaricious governments put 
before it which they do not prove themselves equal 
to resist. It is not only appetite which the drinker 
has to resist, but the fellowship of associates and 
the greed of the seller and the government which 
sells him his license to traffic in liquor and pro- 
tects him in it. 

Of all modern contrivances for mischief on a 
great scale, this governmental association in the 
liquor business under the name of "license," 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS HABITS. 135 

stands without a rival. It keeps open and pro- 
tected, two or three hundred thousand shops in 
this country for the manufacture of the drink 
habit in the young and the strengthening the habit 
in the middle-aged and old. When the greed of 
the kind of men who will sell liquor, is authorized 
to do it, so that the dramshop becomes a govern- 
mental institution, the prospect looks fair for a 
great harvest of such habits as Gough had to con- 
tend with. Oh, the power of evil habit, what 
a consuming cancer it is, in any form it may 
take! 

But good habit is equally powerful to bless 
men. The habit of wasting keeps men poor, and 
often leads on to dishonesty, crime and disgrace ; 
while the habit of economy treasures every day's 
earnings, provides for success and usefulness, and 
often lays the foundation of a grand integrity and 
a broad and noble character. It is as honest not 
to waste as it is economical. 

Now it is true that our lives are made up largely 
of habits — habits of mind, of feeling, of action. 
We educate ourselves into what we are and what 
we do, and these educated states of mind and 
action are our characters. Our characters, there- 
fore, are simply our combined habits, the strongest 
ones being dominant and giving color and tone 
to our lives. 

It is equally true that our habits for the most 



136 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

part, are formed while we are young, so that we 
take early the shape we are to grow in. 

It is very noticeable in reading biography, that 
the coming peculiarities by which a person be- 
comes distinguished, show themselves distinctly 
in the teens. Most men take their shape before 
they are twenty-one, that is, their habits of mind 
and sentiment and action are established. The 
essential elements of character take form in the 
youthful period. Of course, the thinking is yet 
crude, opinions are only outlined, feeling is an 
impulse, purposes are not well defined, principles 
know little how to assert themselves, but the con- 
sciousness of what one wants to be is distinct. All 
of us whose years have taught us where we are 
and what we are, remember that we are the legiti- 
mate outgrowths of what we were at maturity. 
We have not surprised ourselves if we have others. 

There is a familiar case in modern English biog- 
raphy which finely illustrates this point. It is 
that of Hugh Miller the stone-cutter and geologist. 

He was born in Scotland in 1802. His father 
died soon after, leaving him to the care of his 
mother and two uncles. One of his uncles took 
much pains to interest him in rocks, minerals, 
shells, ferns, plants, the sea, the tides, clouds, rain, 
birds, insects, and natural objects generally. The 
other took equal pains to interest him in history ^ 
antiquities, the social customs of the different peo«- 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS HABITS. 137 

pies ancient and modern, which he must learn 
through books. One taught him to observe na- 
ture ; the other to study books and through them 
to learn of men. They each gave a bent to his 
mind — a habit of observation and study which he 
never outgrew, and which together made him Qne 
of the most marked men of his age. These early 
habits gave direction to his life. 

At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to a 
stone-mason, to learn the trade of stone-cutting. 
For some fifteen years he pursued that vocation 
with skill and industry, travelling through many 
parts of Scotland to work at his hard and dusty 
hammering, till he found it was injuring his 
health, and he gave it up. 

But while working at his trade he did not give 
up Ms early acquired habits of observation and 
study. He made the rocks he was cutting yield 
to him their secrets. He compared them with 
other rocks to observe their differences. He stud- 
ied their structure and composition. He made 
collections of the many varieties of rocks, and the 
minerals, and fossils found in connection with 
them, and classified them. Then he sought to 
learn their histories, and the parts they played in 
the structure of the earth, in the soils, and their re- 
lations to vegetation. The fossils led him to study 
their history and their relations to living species 
of animals, Wherever he went he carried his 



138 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

hammer and chisel. He visited all stone quarries, 
mines, cliffs, caves, mountains, and everywhere 
asked the rocks and soils for their stories. And 
all this while he worked at his trade. But this 
was not all. His habit of reading was not laid 
aside. And reading and observing much led him 
to writing. His study filled his mind with much 
that he was glad to write about. The rocks be- 
came his friends, and learning from them their 
histories and qualities he wrote of them with great 
intelligence and enthusiasm. 

His life during these toils and studies was not 
an easy one. He was often associated with coarse, 
brutal men; worked, ate and slept with them; 
passed his evenings often in wretched hovels, and 
slept on the hardest apologies for beds. Yet, sin- 
gularly enough, leading such a life, toiling on 
rocks, gathering specimens of them, studying, 
seeming to love them, in 1829, when twenty-seven 
years old, he published a volume of "Poems, 
Written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman 
Mason." "Leisure hours!" Where did he find 
them? Doing a journeyman's full work at his 
heavy trade; gathering cabinets wherever he 
went; reading history, science, philosophy, fiction, 
poetry, in his spare moments; he yet found lei- 
sure hours enough to write a volume of poems. 

After this he contributed to the "Inverness 
Courier" a series of articles on "The Herring 



THE YOTTKG MAN AXD HIS HABITS. 139 

Fishery," which were afterward published in a 
volume. About this time he became an account- 
ant in a bank, to promote his health, the stone 
dust being unfavorable to it. While at this he 
published " Scenes and Legends of the North of 
Scotland." Soon after he published his celebrated 
" Letter to Lord Brougham," which Mr. Gladstone 
said, " showed a mastery of pure and masculine 
English that even an Oxford scholar might have 
envied." In 1840 he went into Edinburgh as editor 
of " The Witness," a journal of a strong and unique 
character. In a few years followed one after an- 
other, "First Impressions of England and Its 
People; " " The Old Eed Sandstone; " " The Foot- 
prints of The Creator; " " My Schools and School- 
masters;" "Geology of the Base Rocks;" and 
" Testimony of the Rocks ; " — all works of great 
merit, widely read by the greatest minds of all 
English-speaking countries. 

As a scientific writer, he surpassed all the men 
of his time in giving a poetic life, a vivid intellec- 
tual glow to the commonly dry subjects of science. 
Some of his scientific books are almost prose- 
poems. And yet he was accurate and faithful in 
the highest degree. 

This sketch of this good and grand man, one of 
the grandest, take him all in all, that has lived in 
the century, shows the power and use of good 
habits early formed. Those two habits of the 



140 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

observation of nature and the study of good books, 
given him by his uncles, joined their forces to 
make his greatness and usefulness. One made 
him a great scientist, the other a man of letters. 

All young men cannot be Hugh Millers, but they 
can be as much benefited by early -formed good 
habits as was he. The destructive power of bad 
habits is seen in the wrecks of manhood all about 
us ; while the man-making power of good habits, 
is equally seen in the good men and their grand 
successes that are the ornaments and glory of all 
the ages, 



IHE YOUNG MAN A^D HIS PLEASURES* 141 



CHAPTER XL 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS PLEASURES. 

Few things are more important to understand 
than the relation of pleasure to true life. Pleasure 
has its place in every right life. It is not to be 
ruled out as evil. It is not to be frowned down 
as sensual and unsanctified. It is a fundamental 
truth that pleasure has a righteous place in hy- 
giene, in morals, in sociality, and in religion. It 
enters lawfully into the whole of life and holds 
a large place in the best human society ; and yet 
it is full of danger. It has wrecked many a life, 
and will wreck many more, because its true use 
and place are not understood. Somehow it usu- 
ally occupies the place where the way forks, and 
one road is right and the other wrong, one leads 
to success and the other to failure. Always at 
this critical juncture, if pleasure is taken for an 
object in life — something to be lived for — an aim 
and end, it will allure to deceive and defraud. So 
taken, it is always a dissipation, wasteful and 
disappointing. It is beautiful in prospect, but 
wretched in retrospect. But when it is taken 



142 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEK. 

singly for the spice, ornament, sparkle of the gen- 
nine and permanent things which make np a sen- 
sible and nsefnl life, it is a thing of beauty and a 
perpetual joy. The good of pleasure is all in the 
way it is taken. The first thing to settle upon as 
a principle is that pleasure is condiment and not 
food, is ornament and not substance, is glitter and 
not gold, is stage-decoration and not a character in 
real life. It holds no high place; is no treasure 
to be sought for its value ; is not riches, honor, 
usefulness, strength, peace, plenty, or anything of 
permanent worth. It is not, therefore, to be bought 
at any price, to be run for as a prize, to be lived 
for as an object worthy of human endeavor. It is 
to be remanded to its true place as the flavor, 
frankincense, illumination of life. The best that 
can be said for it is that it is oil on the machinery, 
which prevents friction and rust. 

There are the pleasures of the senses delightful 
and perpetual, and at the same time innocent and 
beneficial, when kept in subjection to their true 
uses. Agreeable and life-long are the pleasures of 
appetite giving constant rest to the plain, hard 
necessities of eating and drinking and the labor of 
producing and preparing our food and drink. 
Immensely costly are the necessities of our appe- 
tites. We work for them through life and must 
work for them. If eating were a painful opera- 
tion, in addition to the toil of producing our food, 



THE YOtTXG MAN AXD HIS PLEASURES. 143 

and food was acrid and bitter to the taste, sicken- 
ing to the stomach, and deranging to the whole 
system, how grievous would be the necessity of 
eating. But as it is, it gives a cheerful zest to the 
whole of life. We eat three times a day with such 
gratification that we never tire of it, so long as we 
eat righteously; for it must be understood that no 
righteousness is more exacting than that of the 
appetite, and no morality more relentless. The 
sins of appetite are many and great, leading to 
much sickness, pain, poverty and physical and 
moral ruin. All the wretchedness and demorali- 
zation of intemperance in all its forms of eating 
and drinking, originate in the perversion of appe- 
tite from its use to its pleasure. More time is 
wasted, more money is squandered, more lives are 
wrecked, more hearts are crushed, more deeds of 
infamy are done, more crime is committed, more 
social degradation is caused, by giving the appe- 
tite to pleasure, than by any other mistake, or sin 
of humanity. More young men start on this road 
to ruin than any other, and more find ruin here 
than in any other direction. The start is so easy 
and gentle in the use of some pleasant drink with 
only a slight infusion of an intoxicant, as in cider, 
wine, beer, that it seems the safest thing in the 
world to drink it, and thus begin to drink for 
pleasure. Drinking once for pleasure prepares 
the way for drinking again and again and so on 



144 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MOT. 

and on till the worst ruin is reached. By the mis- 
takes and wretchedness of millions who have 
learned to drink for pleasure, the young men of 
this age ought to learn that the one safe way is to 
touch not and taste not any intoxicant. A good 
lesson on this subject is taught in the life of 
Horace Greeley, the founder of the New York 
Tribune, as given in Dr. Lambert's reminiscences 
of conversations with the great editor. Mr. Greeley 
was reared in Vermont in the early time before 
total abstinence was talked of, when almost every- 
body drank rum and cider, with as little fear as 
tea and coffee. Dr. Lambert says, " One day, in 
answer to my question, when and why he became 
a total abstainer, he very pleasantly narrated that 
in his earliest boyhood, he had seen enough of 
the effects of alcoholics, and especially in the form 
of rum and cider, to make him very decidedly re- 
solve, though he had never heard a word about 
temperance, never to let a drop of that vile stuff 
enter his blood, and there never did. There was 
not a family in that neighborhood, and he believed 
not in the town, that did not keep, nor a man who 
did not drink, at least the liquors he had men- 
tioned — with the result, a toper in every family. 
On his twelfth birthday his mother, who with 
half a dozen women in town never drank any kind 
of alcoholics, addressed to him privately the first 
tem£>erance lecture that he heard. She pointed 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS PLEASURES. 145 

out the evils suffered all around tliem from the 
use of intoxicating drinks, and asked kim if any 
sensible boy would allow suck a kabit to fasten 
itself upon kim. "When lie told ker that lie kad 
noticed and thought of all these things long be- 
fore, and had fully resolved never to taste liquor, 
she cauoiit him in her arms, and huffffing him to 
her, kissed him repeatedly, bathing his cheeks 
with tears ; then reaching for the Bible she placed 
his right hand on it and swore him never to taste 
any intoxicating liquors." There is a picture that 
ought to hang in every Sunday-school and every 
home in the land — Horace Greeley, with his hand 
on the Bible pledging to his mother never to taste 
intoxicating liquors. 

Yet, terrible as is the abuse of appetite, its legit- 
imate pleasures are satisfying and lasting. The 
friendly table is agreeable in its time. Eating to- 
gether is a sort of social sacrament, and earning 
and preparing food a consecrating toil. Every 
human home is made all the more a home through 
the pleasures of ax^petite rightfully enjoyed. 
There is a benefaction in this pleasure so constant 
and universal that it proves a divine purpose in 
it. We do not make our natural appetites ; tkey 
are given to us. Tkey are universal, — all men 
kave them as gifts not of their own contriving, 
but as planned by the Author of their wonderfully 
made bodies. Shall we say that this natural ap- 

IO 



146 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUHG MEN. 

petite is wrong, because of this charm of a peren- 
nial pleasure in it? By no means. The legitimate 
use of every faculty and power of our being is 
pleasurable. And the more intense the pleasure 
the more useful and sacred the power. 

The charm of appetite is much enhanced by the 
added pleasures of the other senses, smell, sight, 
hearing, and by the pleasures of conversation and 
sociality. And the pleasures of sociality are even 
more intense than those of appetite. The joy of 
social intercourse is a commanding one, almost 
omnipotent over many men. Up out of this soil 
of sociality spring all the pleasures of the social 
affections, the family and the home. 

These considerations begin to open before us 
the roots of our pleasures, begin to show us how 
all the best of our life is springing full of pleasure, 
not our senses only but our affections, family re- 
lations, and home ties. It would seem that our 
nature is planted full of pleasures, that every fac- 
ulty, affection, sense, is edged and nerved with an 
intense pleasure, and that they all work together, 
like the keys of a musical instrument to produce 
the pleasure-music of our life. 

It would almost seem by this that man was made 
for pleasure — that his nature points to pleasure 
as its aim and end, as surely as the musical instru- 
ment is made for music. If this view even hints 
at truth, we must be careful how we inveigh 



THE YOUitG MAX AXD HIS PLEASURES. ±4? 

against pleasure and how we restrain our inclina- 
tion to pleasure and hedge up the ways to it, 

But we must be careful to inquire whether this 
includes the whole view of human nature before 
we conclude that man is made wholly for pleasure. 
From what we have considered, we must see that 
it is difficult to rule out pleasure, that it enters 
constitutionally into human life and will not de- 
part at any man's bidding. 

If we look further, and we must look further, 
we shall find that appetite is not given for plea- 
sure, but for the support, health and usefulness of 
the body and through the body of the whole man. 
As soon as the body begins to live it begins to die. 
It is subject at once to wear and tear. Its power 
is soon exhausted, unless it is replenished with 
nourishment. Indeed, the body is all the time 
dependent on the appetite to keep up the supply 
of its forces. The appetite is the recruiting offi- 
cer, quartermaster, and supply agent for both body 
and mind in the campaign of life. 

The prime use of appetite, then, is nourishment, 
and the pleasure derived from it is wholly a sec- 
ondary matter. Properly, we eat and drink to 
live, not for the pleasure of eating and drinking. 
Pleasure is added to the first and true and whole 
use of appetite, simply to secure attention to it, to 
be a stimulating reminder that the wants of the 
body must be supplied. If it was painful to eat, 



148 LOOKIHG FORWAKD FOE YOtJNG MEtf* 

men would avoid it as much as possible ; if it was 
a matter of indifference, neither pleasurable nor 
painful, they would neglect it, and many would 
die of starvation. The pleasure of appetite, then, 
is a contrivance to secure the performance of the 
duty of eating. It is a benevolent and delightful 
contrivance as well as an intelligent and .useful 
one. 

Perhaps there are few better arguments to prove 
that man is the handiwork of an intelligent and 
benevolent Creator, than this which is drawn from 
the pleasures of the appetites, propensities and 
affections of men. Yet when we have made the 
argument, and are satisfied with the conclusion 
and have studied the philosophy of pleasure, we 
must see, that in all its forms, it exists not for 
itself, not as a purpose in living, but as a second- 
ary incentive to human activities. In other words, 
pleasure is the sugar of life to sweeten the solid 
and necessary food and drink ; the salt of life to 
season the viands; the spice and condiment to 
serve as an appetizer. 

Pleasure, then, is not something to be lived for 
— not an object to be sought at the sacrifice of 
other and better things — not an end to command 
our endeavors — not a purpose to occupy the human 
mind and employ its powers. It at best but oils 
the machinery, and makes cheery the every-day 
workshops of humanity. Not in any department 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS PLEASUKES. 149 

of life, does it assume a first place. It does not 
rightly rise into a business; cannot be dignified 
as an employment; nor serve as a manly object of 
pursuit. In childhood it may innocently occupy 
a large amount of time and thought, but not in 
manhood. In the family, children may indulge 
in much play as healthful for their bodies and 
minds, but not men and women. In the social 
world pleasure may illuminate and gladden human 
intercourse, but not be the animating purpose. 
Pleasure may properly come in all round and throw 
its gilding light over business, marriage, family, 
morality and religion, but these things all exist 
independent of it — exist for things better and 
grander than pleasure -seekers can possibly con- 
ceive. 

" What," some one may be ready to ask, " do 
not men marry for pleasure?" The answer is, 
"Very likely many do; but so many as do are 
very likely to want a divorce before a great while." 
Marrying for pleasure often turns out to be marry- 
ing disappointment. Pleasure is an object too 
undignified, too trifling, too unbusiness-like, and 
unsentimental, and too void of moral purpose and 
force to marry for. Pleasure-seekers at the mar- 
riage-altar are those who dishonor and degrade it. 
Those who eat for pleasure usually get the dys- 
pepsia and can't eat at all without pain ; and those 
who niarry for pleasure soon find its edge so 



150 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

blunted as no longer to be enjoyable. And why? 
Simply because they put a secondary thing for the 
first. In homely phrase, they " put the cart be- 
fore the horse." They marry with too unimpor- 
tant an object, and hence degrade marriage and it 
refuses to give them its natural and hallowing en- 
joyments. Treat marriage as a common thing of 
pleasure and it wdll not have much pleasure to 
give. Treat it as a holy thing of reason, love and 
conscience — as a sacrament of affectionate life — as 
a soul-union of consenting hearts for mutual ben- 
efit — for an unselfish doing of good to each other, 
and pleasure unalloyed will come to gladden and 
hallow and crown it. 

Marriage of all human estates and experiences 
is most pleasurable when it is entered with right 
conditions and purposes. But the pleasure must 
come in its legitimate way as the result of an 
honorable and high-minded union entered into to 
help each other, live truly and in genuine respect 
for each other's persons and characters. So en- 
tered, pleasure comes to garland the union with 
the exquisite flowers and fruits of its growth. 

All pleasure, to be legitimate and satisfactory, 
must come in similarly legitimate ways, as the 
fruit of some honorable purpose, condition, or 
character. It cannot be purchased, or lived for, or 
successfully sought as a primary object of pur- 
suit. Seek it for itself and it will be shy and dis~ 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS PLEASURES. 151 

appointing. The pleasures of appetite come only, 
in their best and most helpful satisfaction, to the 
temperate who intelligently use the appetite for its 
legitimate purpose. The gluttonous and drunken 
get only a delirium of pleasure which is followed 
with the revenges of disease and pain. All living 
for the pleasures of appetite is mortgaging one's 
self to Shylock who will foreclose the moment he 
can get his pound of flesh. The whole system of 
tippling in alcoholic beverages, and of pampering 
appetite with delicious and dainty edibles for gus- 
tatory pleasure, is a part of a common mistake of 
making pleasure a primary object of pursuit, which 
gets its revenges in the misery it entails. This 
study of appetital pleasure shows the delusion 
concerning all pleasure-seeking. The notion that 
pleasure is to be successfully sought apart from 
the honorable pursuits of life's great aims — in 
amusements, games, self-indulgencies, in sensual 
excitement and the fever of animal gratification, 
is the bane of many a young life. How often is 
the golden morning of life spent in the pursuits 
of pleasure, to the neglect of those preparations 
which alone can open the way to true success 
and the only pleasure worth the having. A wasted 
morning begins an unsuccessful day. A pleasure- 
seeking youth is a poor apprenticeship to an effi- 
cient manhood. Early delusions seldom ripen into 
later wisdom. Falsity does not lead toward truth, 



152 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

The point here urged earnestly and with em- 
phasis, is, that true pleasure which is virtuous and 
helpful, is that which comes in good aims and use- 
ful pursuits — comes while one is animated with 
manly endeavors— comes as the good cheer of a 
life wide-awake for what is humanly honorable 
and profitable — comes as the exhilaration of a 
spirit, which like the sunshine, is trying to make 
everything grow into beauty, strength and useful- 
ness. The idea that a grown-up person is a child 
and must be amused to keep him from crying, is 
certainly not very creditable to one who expects 
to push his way up to useful manhood. The call 
for amusements simply to kill time and keep a 
childish youth from grief, must come from a great 
inward vacancy, of which one ought to be ashamed 
w^ho means to be a man. Amusement, recreation, 
pleasure, for itself alone, belong to the child rather 
than the man. And yet they are things that 
swamp many men, especially young men. Many 
young men outgrow the boy slowly, and some 
never outgrow him. There are not a few gray- 
headed, fifty and sixty year old boys among us— 
men who have not yet begun to think of being 
anything but boys, or at most, boyish men who 
want to make play the chief thing of life — want 
to eat, drink, have sport, laugh and joke and call 
that living. 

Boyhood is very well in its place ; indeed it is 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS PLEASUBES. 153 

an institution we could not very well get along 
without. And its jollity and rolicksomeness are 
in keeping with its hilarious spirit and its uncon- 
sciousness of care and purpose. A boy is a per- 
pendicular animal, set upright to see how many 
shapes it can assume and how many contortions 
it can make, and how much it can enjoy its wrig- 
gles and roystering. But when a boy passes into 
manhood, where responsibility, care, intelligent 
adaptation of power to useful ends, is the order, 
what belongs to the boy ought to be left behind. 
Play is no longer the order, unless it be occasion- 
ally for a transient pastime, having in view mus- 
cular and healthful profit. Manhood is for manly 
things, in which work, business, manly pursuits 
should give pleasure. With the coming of man- 
hood there comes to true men, new orders of plea- 
sure — those of business, intelligence, family, use- 
fulness. In this new order, work is not held as 
drudgery, nor duty as irksome, nor the steady 
pursuit of any vocation as burdensome. These 
are the really good things of life in which are 
to be found the genuine pleasures of character- 
making, manhood-developing, society-ennobling, 
humanity-blessing things. 

Pleasure, therefore, in all its forms, is to be 
ruled out as a purpose in life, and only comes 
properly in as the spice for variety, as relaxation 
for rest and change, as flavor to give a keener zest 



154 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

to our pursuits, as sweetening and relish for the 
solid and useful. So the true way is to make all 
our employments pleasurable by the cheeriness 
we carry into them — to make the whole of life one 
constant source of pleasure, by the wisdom, worth, 
and warmth of our constantly exuberant spirits. 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS AMBITIONS. 155 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS AMBITIONS. 

That old counsel to the young to " aim high," 
has the merit of practical wisdom in it. There is 
as much in aiming as there is in shooting. Indeed 
aiming is the chiefly important thing. The hit- 
ting quality is in the aiming. Whoever shoots 
without aiming may hit somewhere, yet is liable 
to hit nowhere. Haphazard shooting is uncertain 
and dangerous. Nobody can foretell its mischief. 
It is much so in life. Haphazard living, though 
common, is seldom successful, save in the very 
commonest ways. Men who live in a haphazard 
way trust to luck for good results. And men who 
purposely trust to luck, are gamblers. They vol- 
untarily take the chance of success, or failure. 
Chance is the gambler's method. It is the fool's 
opportunity, for there is no wisdom in it ; and it 
is the knave's opportunity, for there is no virtue 
in it. There is no principle, or smartness, either 
in luck or chance. There is nothing manly in a 
bright man's putting his power on a level with 
the ignoramus as he does when he enters upon a 
game of chance. Luck, chance, lottery, gambling. 



156 LOOKING FORWARD TOR YOUNG MEN". 

all class in one moral order, which men of good 
ambitions do well to play shy of. The only good 
hick is in good ambition, good sense, and good en- 
deavor. The Incky fisherman is the man who fishes 
skilfully. The lucky mechanic is the one who 
does good work and sticks to it. The lncky busi- 
ness man is the one who understands his business 
and pushes it. The lucky professional man is the 
one who is master of his profession. The lucky 
man all round is the one who does everything 
well. This is the luck in which true men put 
their trust. It seldom fails to bring a rich reward. 
What multitudes of young men in all the callings 
have trusted their all to the luck of good sense 
and good work and have been enriched with the 
prizes of noble lives and good fortunes. 

One of the ways to have good luck is to have 
good aims. It is almost certain that every young 
man has something in his mind to live for, some- 
thing which his ambition covets, which awakens 
his best endeavors for attainment. Between the 
highest and lowest of these ambitions there is a 
wide range, that makes all the difference we see 
in men. It is men's ambitions that make or un- 
make them. If a man has an ambition to be a 
clown, it is difficult to make anything else of him. 
If one has an ambition to see the world, he will 
travel, if he has to do it on foot and alone. If 
one has an ambition to study, it will be almost 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS AMBITIONS. 157 

sure to shape his life. An ambition for business 
will show itself in that way. An ambition for 
mechanics will seek some trade and build a life 
on it. An ambition for the ministry will find the 
way into the pulpit. A political ambition will 
affiliate with politicians and be interested in their 
affairs. A fourteen-year-old boy had an ambition 
to be a physician, and because he could not have 
his way at home he ran away to California, worked 
on a ranch, and borrowed books of the nearest 
physician and studied by himself. He became a 
noted physician. Nearly all marked men had an 
early ambition for the line of life in which they 
became noted. An early ambition is usually the 
finger that points the way the boy should take. 
If there be no ambition for any particular line of 
business, there almost always is for the style of 
man one wants to be. 

At the bottom, there are two classes of ambi- 
tions that are likely to actuate youthful aspira- 
tions; one is to be a man, in the best sense of 
that noble word. Our language has no richer word 
than man, save those which relate to the Author 
of his being. Man is not a brute — not an animal, 
but something vastly more and better. He crowns 
the sentient creation. Among the qualities that 
ennoble him is reason, which makes him a rational, 
thinking, self-making, and self-directing being. 
This embraces his knowing, planning, acquiring, 



158 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEX. 

growing qualities. By this he works his way in 
life, creates business, acquires learning, reduces 
nature to his use, and becomes himself the ruler 
in the earth. 

Another of his great qualities is affection, which 
links him with his fellow, makes him kind, gener- 
ous, considerate of the wants and interests of 
others. Through his affection he uses his reason 
to found society, organize government, enact and 
enforce law, establish business, education, and the 
arts and amenities of civilized life. The neigh- 
borly relations, the compact of nations, the inter- 
course of the world, broad and grand and peace- 
ful as it is, are all the outgrowths of human 
affection. The great commonwealth of humanity 
which is coining so rapidly to demonstrate the 
kinship of men and what they may do for each 
other, is the great natural product of manly af- 
fection. 

Still better, if possible, and richer in its works, 
is conscience, the highest department of human 
mentality. This uses affection and reason to in- 
stitute and carry forward its great enterprises of 
justice, humanity, and religion. Conscience giv r es 
the sense of what is right, just, good, holy, divine 
— of what is to be believed in, and hoped and lived 
for. It embraces the whole realm of morality and 
religion as its own, which it has produced and 
keep>s alive with its animating impulses to right- 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS AMBITIONS. 150 

eons living. These three — reason, affection, con- 
science — nnited, constitute man. They are in 
every man; and their union gives a modification 
of each — a blending of all in the personality which 
we call man. This is what the nobler ambition of 
the young man contemplates when he wants to 
be a man. Whoever starts out in life with an 
ambition to be such a man starts well. This is 
an ambition which ought to ennoble every young 
man's soul. 

The boy wants to be a man ; but with the aver- 
age boy the notion of the man is one of strength, 
skill, power to master. He has no conception of 
the man of mind and character — the responsible, 
helping, inspiring man. Such a notion of man 
comes later, but early enough to captivate many 
a soulful young man. And often is the young 
soul supremely quickened by the ambition to be 
such a man. Such a quickening often comes be- 
fore the question of business or the place in soci- 
ety is considered at all. It is one of the best signs 
of coming excellence. It indicates a right spirit 
— an embryo man such as the world is always in 
need of. This is a most worthy ambition, and 
well is it for the youth who is actuated by it. 

But at the other extreme from this is an ambi- 
tion to be a rowdy, to adopt the manners and 
engage in the frivolities of the childish and 
unmanly. " My first ambition was to be a stage- 



160 LOOKING FOEWAED FOE YOUNG MEN, 

driver," said one who afterward became a State- 
driver — in other words, a governor. Many a boy 
has coveted the whip and reins of a coach-and- 
f our. Many a boy has seen glory in a circus-rider, 
and nowadays not a few see it in a bicycle-rider. 
Things showy and noisy have a charm for a boy's 
early years. That many young men o ;tgrow the 
boy slowly, we see in the numbers who hang 
around saloons, theatres, shows, parades, and loaf- 
ing places, like moths around lamps, and who 
spend time enough in such dissipating resorts to 
enrich their minds with a good education or their 
pockets with a good outfit for business. Too 
many are enamored of the rowdy. They like his 
twaddle and ribaldry. He seems to them smart, 
cheery, and full of good fellowship. And it too 
often happens that young men who are well reared 
and well surrounded, get delighted and deluded 
by the coarse and vulgar flippancy of rowdyish 
men. 

A wealthy man had two sons whom he fur- 
nished with everything to interest them in his 
house, yard, and barn, thinking he would beat 
the saloon, the billiard-hall, and public resort, in 
the better amusements he would afford them. 
Yet he was surprised to find his boys, when well 
grown up toward manhood, full of desires to see 
and associate with the rowdy element of society. 
From others they had heard of what was to be 



$SE' YOUXG MAX AND HIS AMBITIONS. 161 

seen and heard in the blinded resorts of the streets, 
and they hungered for the flash and piquancy of 
the ruthan and rowdy society of those places; not 
because they wanted to be bad, but because their 
young imaginations had become excited by what 
they had heard of things there to be enjoyed, and 
because they had not had awakened in them any 
high ambitions. They had had an abundance of 
play, but nothing of work, or useful endeavor. 
Life was to them a play-time, and the world an 
orange to be squeezed for its spicy juice. Hence 
such ambitions as they had were on this low juane. 
How extensive and influential such ambitions 
are, may be inferred from the number of men who 
herd with the sensuous and frivolous and contrib- 
ute to the suprjort of the haunts of dissipation 
and folly. What immense sums of money, what 
countless years of time, what uncounted worth of 
talent and character, are wasted on such ignoble 
ambitions ! It is a great question as to whether 
America, for a hundred years the promise of the 
world, is not to be swamped by the weight and 
degradation of such Ioav ambitions. Multitudes 
of the baser sort of men are coming from Europe, 
and we are rearing multitudes more to join with 
them, to make the saloon and the sensual life the 
dominant powers of the country. We are already 
in a sharp conflict between these high and low 

ambitions. Externally, it is the saloon, the gam- 
ii 



162 LOOKING forward for young men. 

Ming-house, and the resorts of folly and crime on 
the one hand, and the school, the church, and the 
home, on the other; but internally it is base and 
worthy ambitions which are pitted against each 
other to lead on the conflict. And that conflict 
is becoming sharper and sharper, as the moral 
sense of the best men is quickened and the free- 
dom of the sensual is restricted. Good people are 
uneasy and anxious in the interest of the children 
and youth, and also in the interest of the deluded 
and sensual classes. And the prospect of the 
daily floods from Europe and Asia makes them 
still more uneasy. It indicates an irrepressible 
conflict not less vigorous than that between free- 
dom and slavery. 

What should be the attitude of Americans 
toward these incoming peoples from the oppressed 
nations of the Old World? Most certainly it should 
be one of Christian hospitality. And the Chris- 
tian part of our hospitality should lead us to edu- 
cate, reform, and Americanize these comers from 
afar. We have no need of their bad opinions and 
habits, no need of the brute from Europe, Asia, and 
Africa, but should reduce it to a man as fast as 
possible. We should give no welcome to their 
base customs and. styles of life, but shape our laws 
and intercourse with them to their improvement. 
Ours is a better country than those they left, and 
they should shape their lives to its better condi- 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS AMBITIOXS. 163 

tions ani their minds to its better principles. 
They are our wards to train up to the higher man- 
hood and womanhood of onr country. We have 
a work to do for them to give them our opinions, 
principles, styles of life. It is not for us to yield 
to them and carry our society down to their level, 
but to uplift them to the better life of American 
citizenship. Our ambition should be, not only 
for our own high-minded success in life, but for 
the improvement of all who come to us from else- 
where. They will come, so long as we keep a bet- 
ter country than elsewhere exists ; and so long as 
they come it is for us to make them over accord- 
ing to our patterns of true life. All the indica- 
tions are that immigration will swarm in upon us 
from the lower tiers of foreign society, till this 
continent shall be covered with an immense and 
crowded population. 

Our health and our hope are in the good ambi- 
tions of the rising generations of the original 
American people. Charge the young rjeople with 
intelligence and moral purpose to be true to the 
meaning of American life, which is to make and 
keep a country actuated by Christian morality 
and humanity, and all will be well. We want 
youth inoculated with righteousness, in love 
with pure and humane principles. We want, now 
and continually, great harvests of such as helped 
to lay the foundations of our republic. Perhaps 



164 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOOTG MEtf. 

there is no better way to continue to produce them 
than to continue to study the lives and characters 
of those most charged with Christian patriotism 
in the early days which tried men's souls. Among 
those best suited to the theme in hand, none is bet- 
ter than the life and character of John Adams, 
the second President of the United States. He is 
a good example to point a moral for our youth, 
because he was of humble family, made his way 
slowly in the world, was largely instrumental in 
securing and organizing our nationality, rose to 
its highest place of honor, and maintains it in his- 
tory. 

He was born October 30th, 1735, a little more 
than forty years before the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. His father was a small farmer ten miles 
south of Boston, but a worthy man who had 
worthy ambitions for his children. He was a re- 
ligious man, deacon of a church, and brought up 
his family to strict church-going habits. The boy 
worked on the farm like other boys of his time 
till nearly sixteen years old. No neighbor saw 
anything more in this boy than in the other boys 
of the neighborhood. He did not see more in 
himself than in other boys. But his father had 
worthy ambitions for him and wanted to make 
him a minister. He told the boy so; bat the boy 
thought he preferred to be a farmer. "Well," 
said the father, "it is time you were at it in ear- 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS AMBITIONS. 165 

nest ; so henceforth take vigorous hold of the work 
and learn how to be a first-class farmer." But 
the suggestion of an education worked in his mind 
while he worked in the field, till it grew into an 
ambition. And so he told his father that the ed- 
ucation part of his project had grown strong in 
his mind. His father was glad and started him 
off to school; and in due time to college. He 
graduated and became a teacher; then a student 
at law, studying evenings ; and at length a law- 
yer. In college he stood high as a scholar and an 
honorable young man, and when he was through 
had a strong inclination to become a preacher. 
He was religious, and would like the life of a 
minister, but he had come to distrust Calvinism, 
and to doubt its being the true interpretation of 
Christianity. So he concluded that he would 
carry all his moral ambitions into the legal pro- 
fession. 

His diary and his letters to his friends during 
this period of his life are full of manly strength 
and the noblest ambitions that can actuate a young 
soul. They indicate the fibre of his mind and the 
nobility of his spirit. They forecast his future. 
They are strongly intellectual, moral, patriotic, 
and religious. They foretell the growth and 
independence of America. They are reading 
full of bracing health for the young men of 
to-day. They are found in his " Life and Works " 



166 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOTOG MEN. 

by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams. When 
he ponred out his soul in letters to his young 
friends on the great topics which were interesting 
him so much, he had no thought that they would 
be read by other than the eyes for which they 
were written. But the children of his young 
friends found them, after he had lived his grand 
life, and now the world has them as a rich legacy 
of his fruitful and noble mind. In all the litera- 
ture of religion, there is scarcely anything finer 
and sweeter than one letter to his young friend 
Cranch, wuitten a little before he was twenty-one. 
It is a fervent outpouring of intelligent, even po- 
etic, gratitude for the many blessings of life. The 
letter begins with a complaint of his hard lot in 
having to teach school through the day and study 
law at night. Then he immediately checks his 
complaint and enumerates in fine and fervent lan- 
guage his blessings in this life and points to the 
richer ones awaiting him in the life to come, and 
then adds: " Shall I now presume to complain of 
my hard fate? God forbid! I am happy and 
shall remain so while health is indulged to me, 
after all the other circumstances that fortune can 
place me in." 

As a young lawyer he had a long and hard 
struggle, but slowly worked his way at last into 
an extensive business, which was utterly broken 
up by the occupation of Boston by the British 
Army just before the Revolution, 



THE'YOUXG MAX A2sD HIS AMBITIONS. 167 

Then his country asked for and received his ser- 
vices as counsellor, delegate to the Colonial Con- 
gress, minister to foreign countries — twice to 
France, once to Holland and once to England, and 
finally, President of the United States. 

But that in his life which is most impressive 
and valuable to study, is the noble ambitions of 
his youthful years, and the generally wise and 
practical views of life for individuals and nations. 

He was on the committee of the Colonial Con- 
gress which drafted the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, but insisted that Jefferson should make the 
first draft, because he received the most votes, and 
as he said to Jefferson, " because you can write 
better than I can." He nominated Washington 
for commander-in-chief, as he said, "As the man 
above all others best fitted for the station, and 
best able to promote union." His cousin, Samuel 
Adams, seconded the nomination. 

On the 2d of July, 1776, after the vote had been 
taken that assured the movement for independ- 
ence, he wrote in his diary: "The greatest ques- 
tion was decided which ever was debated in 
America, and a greater, perhaps, never was nor 
will be decided among men." 

This day " will be the most memorable epoch in 
the history of America; to be celebrated by suc- 
ceeding generations as the great anniversary fes- 
tival, commemorated as the day of deliverance, by 



168 LOOKING FORAY AKD FOR YOUNG KEN. 

solemn acts of devotion to Almighty God, from 
one end of the continent to the other, from this 
time forward for evermore." 

Mr. Bancroft, in his history of the United States, 
says of him at this time: "His intellect and pub- 
lic spirit, all the noblest parts of his nature, were 
called into the fullest exercise, and strained to the 
uttermost of their healthful power. Combining 
more than any other f arness of sight and fixedness 
of belief with courage and power of utterance, he 
was looked up to as the ablest debater in Con- 
gress. . . . When in the life of a statesman were 
six months of more importance to the race than 
these six months in the career of John Adams? " 

And what made them so important? He had 
his faults as a man. He was strong and knew it. 
He was imperious and sometimes had little pa- 
tience with those who could not see so far as he 
did. His intellect was autocratic in its grasp of 
great subjects and occasions, and swept on in im- 
perial power over lesser minds, often to their dis- 
like. He was not a popular man. He knew no 
indirection, or flattery, or ev r en gentle ways of find- 
ing fault with things in which he did not believe. 
This brusque positiveness made him enemies. But 
yet in his place and way he was a giant for the 
American cause and for truth, good government, 
and humanity. And the source of his beneficent 
power was the good ambitions of his youth. He 



THE YOUXG MAX AND HIS AMBITIONS. 169 

prepared himself for the magnificent work of his 
life, by charging his young mind with noble prin- 
ciples and aspirations. And this is the lesson for 
every young man to learn of this great character. 
Only a few can reach his greatness, but his prin- 
ciples of action are for everybody, even the hum- 
blest. Good ambitions are the making of men, and 
good men cannot be made without them. It is of 
the same importance that every man should be 
led by good ambitions to his best as 'that Adams 
should. Every other man has the same interest 
in life that he had — has a life to live which is 
everything to himself and much to the world. 
The aims which lead it give it color and character. 
Let the young learn this well and they are already 
half-made into what thev should be. 



/ 

170 LOOKING FORWARD FOB YOUNG MEN. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS READING. 

It would be difficult to enumerate all the. things 
that enter into the make-up of a young man's life, 
help form his character, and work out his success 
or failure. Of them all, perhaps none are more 
potent for good or evil than reading. 

This is a reading age. Almost every one reads. 
And those who do not read learn much of those 
who do. Reading makes far-off knowledge so 
common, makes difficult knowledge so easy, makes 
scientific and learned knowledge so practical that 
the non-reading are much enlightened and influ- 
enced by those who read. It is next to impossi- 
ble to live now outside the realm of letters. Type 
is king. The empire of letters is a limited mon- 
archy which has a mighty sway in the world. We 
cannot say that love or money surpasses it, for 
they use the art of letters to carry out their pur- 
poses. Letters have come to serve all uses, and 
be themselves a mighty power in quickening and 
developing mind and in aiding the intelligence 
and enterprise of the world. 

Men learn much by observation, but far more 



THE YOUNG MAX AND HIS READING. Hi 

by reading. Men are much educated by the keen 
sense of observation, but much more by reading. 
Observation intensifies and sharpens a few powers ; 
reading broadens and awakens all to a wider and 
grander activity. Observation makes a narrow 
man, for it limits him to personal sight and knowl- 
edge; reading makes a broad man, for it gives him 
the benefit of the observation and knowledge of 
all men. Reading multiplies a man by all of 
whom he reads. A blind man is cut off by his loss 
of sight from much observation, but reading by 
raised letters, or others reading for him, often 
makes him learned, intense, strong, and influential. 
We have had many great blind men through the 
magnifying power of reading. Many a cripple 
and physically disabled man has become broadly 
intelligent by this enlarging power. A marked 
example of this is William Hickling Prescott, of 
Boston, the laborious and discriminating historian 
who in early life, notwithstanding the affliction of 
almost perpetual and painful rheumatism, and an 
injury to his eyes which made him almost blind 
and often shut him in a dark room for months to- 
gether, set out to become the historian of far-off 
peoples, a knowledge of whom was to be obtained 
from foreign languages and from authors whose 
conflicting accounts must be reconciled by labori- 
ous study and comparison ; and yet he succeeded, 
and his histories of " Ferdinand and Isabella," 



172 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

"The Conquest of Mexico," "The Conquest of 
Peru," and " Philip the Second," are so rich and 
are written with so much spirit and force as to 
read like fairy tales, and with so much intelligence 
and accuracy as to secure their publication in all 
the European languages now used. In his lifetime 
he became the associate and equal of nearly all 
the then living great literary men. His life and 
work, so rich and remarkable, were the product of 
his reading, not so much with his own half-blind 
and often suffering eyes, as by the eyes of those 
he hired to read for him. Under such forbidding 
circumstances, he made reading and writing the 
business of his life. He wrote by the aid of an 
instrument which he invented, something like a 
gridiron, which he laid across the paper, so as to 
write between the wires and in a very coarse hand. 
The power of reading, moved by a noble purpose, 
to make grand men, has few better illustrations 
than this of Mr. Prescott. 

An illustration on a larger scale is seen in the 
Indians who were in possession of the American 
continent, in comparison with the reading men of 
Europe who discovered it four hundred years ago. 
The Indians were men of observation, sharp- 
sighted, quick-witted, governed for the most part 
by men of strong minds. Many men of much no- 
bility of spirit and life were found among them ; 
but they remained stationary in their savage con- 



THE YOUNG man and his reading. 173 

dition from century to century, because they had 
no written language in which to preserve their 
thoughts and acts for successive generations. The 
father's acquirements in knowledge and experi- 
ence could not be kept for his children. There 
could be no accumulation of intellectual or moral 
power, no passing on from generation to genera- 
tion of the increasing capital of mind, morality, 
and religion which constitutes one of the grand- 
est features of a reading x^eople's history. The 
savage man accumulates as little mental and 
moral capital as he does material, because he has 
no written language in which to treasure up the 
soul-accumulations of the ages. The Indian of the 
American woods was no match for the reading 
man of Europe with his cultivated fields, his 
mechanism, art, science, literature, government, 
and their combining and preserving power. The 
Indian accumulated nothing; the reading man 
grew from age to age in all the sources of his 
XDOwer. The one, therefore, in comparison, con- 
stantly dwindled ; the other constantly augmented 
in all that made him superior. No wonder, then, 
that the illiterate red man faded out in the pres- 
ence of the reading white man. It was not because 
one was red and the other white, but because one 
was a reader and the other was not. The result 
was inevitable. 

Reading is a way of growing. A reading man 



174 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOTTXG MEK. 

is not only a growing man, -but lie passes on the 
results of his growth to his posterity. A reading 
community leaves a patrimony of intelligence and 
moral force in its succeeding community, which 
gives it great advantage in its outfit for life. How 
rich the patrimony which the Plymouth Pilgrims 
and the Boston Puritans left to their successors ! 
Behold it now in what the United States has 
grown to be, not only in material wealth, but in 
the accumulated power of mind, morals, and relig- 
ion. What a mighty force for the world's ben- 
efit is treasured in the history of the United 
States as the result of its reading ancestry ! Lan- 
guage, with all its mighty power, is utterly inade- 
quate to express any just notion of what has been 
done for the world by the reading people who 
have made this country. 

It must always be remembered that reading 
makes writing. A reading people makes a writ- 
ing people. Writing is of itself an intellectual 
exercise, peculiarly wholesome and developing. 
While it develops power, it preserves it and passes 
it on to succeeding generations. Our great scien- 
tists, inventors, discoverers, have put their attain- 
ments into books for multitudes to read. These 
books have become the sources of our history and 
made it so immensely rich that it has not only be* 
come one of the great sources of the world's mem 
tal wealth, but it is accumulating more and more 
rapidly. 



THE YOUKTt MAtf AXD HIS READING. 175 

There is no doubt but reading and the writing- 
associated with it are immensely profitable in the 
way of mental and moral wealth, so that the most 
reading people becomes the leading, governing, 
and superior people. 

But in considering the young man's reading, it 
is vitally important that he be helped to see that 
there is a right choice in reading which is every- 
thing to him. Not all reading is equally good, 
and there is much that is positively harmful. 
Bad reading, like bad living, is worse than none. 
Evil gets into books as readily as into conversation 
or conduct. The bad-minded writer puts poison 
into what he writes, and to read what he writes is 
to get the poison. Books and paj)ers which are 
inoculated with evil, poisoned with falsity and 
wrong, carry corruption into the minds and hearts 
of their readers. Books and papers which fire the 
passions, corrupt the imagination, and weaken 
the moral sense, are as much to be avoided as 
places which do the same things. Few things are 
worse than bad books and papers. And one of 
the bad things about them is that they never pre- 
tend to be bad. They advertise for good things. 
They begin plausibly and lead on, adroitly con- 
cealing their moral poison in characters and con- 
duct that mean no good, in arguments that sustain 
wrong, in statements that are agreeable to the evil- 
minded, in exciting and misleading stories, in 



176 LOOKING FOJEtWAKD FOR YOUXG W£R. 

bright but morally dangerous adventures, or in 
strange, out-of-the-way experiences. As a rule, 
stories of passion, wonder, adventure, lawlessness, 
baseness, and crime— stories of infidelity in love, 
recklessness in duty, irregularity of life, are Dead 
Sea poison to the young soul. Stories that a 
young man would not read with his mother or sis- 
ter are not fit for him to read alone. What one 
would be ashamed to read in public he ought to 
be ashamed to read by himself. As a rule, all 
slang-reading, shame-reading, crime-reading, is 
death-reading to the young. In this reading age 
there are few things more to be dreaded than vile 
literature. It should be let alone as we let rattle- 
snakes alone. And much of it is not concealed. 
Not a little of it gets into the daily paj)ers. Our 
reporters are often eager for bad news, which 
should never be told unless in whispers, as we tell 
secrets. Many of them have no moral discretion, 
some of them no shame, and not a few of them no 
moral right to parade their indecency on the great 
forum of the public press. Like other people, they 
should not tell all they know. Papers, like fair- 
minded people, should discriminate in favor of 
what is decent and wholesome in what they say. 
Perhaios there is nothing to which the young of 
our time are exposed which is more pernicious 
than the slime and filth that is spread broadcast 
by many of our papers. Young men need the 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS BEADING. 177 

discriminating wisdom of age and moral insight 
to know how to guard themselves against the lit- 
erary evils to which they are exposed through the 
papers and books which never ought to be read. 
If they will read nothing in private which they 
would not be willing to read to wise and good 
people in public, they will be safe. If they will 
guard their minds against bad reading as they 
would guard their money against thieves and rob- 
bers, they will be safe. And just this vigilance is 
what they need. The young of our time, and es- 
pecially the young men, ought to have the sym- 
pathy of the wise and good on account of their 
fearful exposure to the corruption and misleading 
influence of base literature. But, after all, their 
chief defence is in themselves. They have judg- 
ment; they know what is right. They honor 
what is pure. They realize that our modern life 
is pictured in our literature, and they can choose 
the pure and good and discard the base. And so 
every young man is thrown upon himself to 
choose his reading as he chooses his company, and 
rise or fall by his choice. 

This they should remember, that the world is 
full of good books ; that good reading is plenty as 
water and air, and that it is bread to their minds 
and the nectar of life to their hearts. It is grand 
to live in such a time. Every young man can 
have the great and good of all ages for his com- 



178 LOOKIKG FORWARD FOR YOOTG MEH« 

pany. He can sit down with Socrates and Paul, 
with Galileo and Herschel, with Gibbon and Ma- 
caulay, with Walter Scott and Tennyson, with Irv- 
ing and Bancroft, with Smiles and Holland, with 
Holmes and Whittier, with any number of the 
greatest and best men and women the world has 
ever had, and read their best thoughts and take 
the essence of their lives into his. Never before 
were such opportunities offered to the young as 
now. The world's best company invites them to 
its intellectual banquet-halls. Our schools open 
the mysteries of the alphabet to all. And having 
learned to read, everything else in literature is 
open to them. Reading is the key that opens the 
treasury of all knowledge — opens to the empire 
of human intelligence. An illustrious example 
may serve to make this more impressive. One of 
the greatest readers and most conspicuous men of 
the generation now passed away was Horace 
Greeley, the founder and editor of the New York 
Tribune. A little sketch of his life will show how 
he used the reading-key to open the way to a 
wide knowledge and a grand life. 

He was born in Amherst, N. H., February 3d, 
1811, on a small and very poor farm, so rocky 
and unfertile that it had to be sold by the 
sheriff to pay the debts of his father when Hor- 
ace was twelve years old. The family moved to 
West Haven, Vt. 3 to try another tug to get a liv- 



THE YOUNG MAN AKD HIS READING. 1?0 

ing out of a reluctant soil ; where, till Horace was 
sixteen, lie worked at farming in the old, hard 
way. He was a sickly boy, which interfered much 
with his work. He learned to read very early, 
and having got the key to knowledge, he read 
with greedy pleasure all the books within his 
reach which could give him useful information. 
Books became his most valued friends. He lived 
with them, devoured them, found his chief plea- 
sure in them. Of course in such a poor family, in 
those early times, there were but a few books, and 
few to be borrowed, and those few were the plain, 
solid kind. He did not see such inviting and de- 
lightful books for the young as are common now, 
but read such as he could get over and over again, 
till he could find another to borrow. So enamor- 
ing were books to him that he early conceived a 
desire to be a book-maker. So at the age of six- 
teen he was apprenticed to the printer's trade. 
Now he was like a hearty boy in a ripe fruit or- 
chard ; he had enough to read. And he devoured 
with a ravenous appetite all the books that came 
in his way. He soon became the wonder of the 
village for his information, the giant of the Ly- 
ceum, a sort of reservoir of all kinds of knowl- 
edge. He wrote short articles for the paper arid 
set up the type for them himself ; thus beginning 
his journalistic work. While thus engaged, his 
parents moved to Erie County, Pa., and he visited 



180 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEN. 

tliem twice, walking nearly all the way, a distance 
of about four liundred miles, for lack of money 
to ride. A four-times-four-hundred-mile walk to 
visit his parents, was a pretty good proof of the 
loyalty of his aifections. Such men are usually 
good lovers. 

When he was nineteen the Spectator, the 
paper on which he had worked, closed up and he 
found employment in Jamestown, 1ST. Y., and in 
that vicinity for a time. A little before he was 
twenty-one he went to New York City, and soon 
found employment. There he slowly but surely 
worked his way up to be the foremost journalist in 
this country, and not second to any in the world. 
The last twenty -five years of his life were years 
of immense influence. No man in America was 
more widely known, more read and quoted. His 
great New York Tribune was his monument. 

The point in the story of his life which relates 
to the theme of this chapter was his love and use 
of reading. It was reading that made him. Read- 
ing was his school. It educated him, furnished 
him with knowledge, gave him acquaintance with 
men and the world, and awakened, enlarged, and 
empowered him. 

The Chicago Inter -Ocean has said this of a 
certain class of young men : " The young men who 
sport gold-headed canes, smoke fine cigars, and 
lounge and ogle in front of theatres, are not the 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS BEADING. 181 

future men of business and influence. They are but 
the coming drones who will live oil the world with- 
out making it better, and will die and not be 
missed." Think of Horace Greeley as such a 
young man. If he had spent his spare time in 
such a way, or hunting, fishing, or strolling about 
the village; if he had done nothing wicked, but 
only wasted his evenings and spare time in gossip 
and pleasure, as multitudes of young men do, how 
little would the world have known of him. Had 
he done so, the world would have had no Horace 
Greeley to teach the philosophy of life, to be 
proud of, and to lead it in journalism, statesman- 
ship, and noble living. 

As it was, he taught the young men of America 
how to make the most of themselves, how to make 
time, talents, and opportunities all tell to the 
best advantage, how to make poverty subservient 
to greatness, how to make labor work out success, 
how to put character to its high and grand uses, 
and how to crown virtue with the laurels of honor. 
And especially has he shown how poor, obscure 
young men, who have nothing but their own brain 
and muscles to help them, may become useful and 
influential and make life's hard side serve them 
gloriously. It is inspiriting to have such men 
grow up in humble families. They are lights of 
hope for the poor everywhere. They say to all 
young men, " Come and do likewise," and all young 



182 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

men ought to take courage from their example 
and follow them as leaders in the true way of suc- 
cess and happiness. 

Of course all cannot become as great as was Mr. 
Greeley, even if they follow his example. But it 
will do them as much good as it did him, accord- 
ing to their abilities, to be readers of good books 
and make a practical use of what they acquire 
therefrom. Good and useful intelligence gives 
force and dignity to every life. Good reading 
helps young men in many ways. It gives them 
intelligence ; it devotes their spare hours to en- 
nobling acquirements ; it augments their force of 
character; puts them upon a higher plane of 
thought and life ; saves them from immense waste 
of time and energy on trifling things and dissipat- 
ing company ; and enriches them for the life that 
now is, as well as for that which is before them. 
Judicious, systematic, and persistent reading is 
one way to bring all the world to one's help. So, 
read much and read good authors, is the counsel of 
wisdom to the young man, and keep it up through 
life. 



THE YOU^G MAN AHD HIS HOPES. 183 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE YOU^G MAN ANT) HIS HOPES. 

Long ago one of the great poets said, " Hope 
springs eternal in the human breast ; " and a 
greater than he said, " We are saved by hope." 
The first is an expression of the natural and per- 
petual office of hope springing up spontaneously 
in the souls of men, like vegetation over the earth, 
to give greenness and brightness ; the second inti- 
mates the moral power of hope in transforming 
the mind and leading on to better soul-attainments. 

All poets, rhymesters, and song-makers have 
sung of hope as a half-divine inspiration which 
makes life not only bearable, but throws over it a 
halo of charming light and fills it with springing 
joy and brightening anticipation. It is doubtless 
true that there is no living without hope. He is 
dead who hopes no more. 

There is a sad undertone in human life,' heard 
almost everywhere, sometimes low and musically 
tender and sometimes rising to a wail of agony, 
breaking on other hearts like a dirge of death. It 
is the sinking of hope ; and it opens the way to vice 



184 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEK. 

sometimes, and sometimes to hard and cruel sin. 
Now and then it leads to suicide, and still more 
frequently to a kind of stolidity of sorrow borne 
with a martyr's sense of duty through despairing 
years. There is a low hope in many a soul which 
gives only the twilight to its life. Pity the weak 
of hope. They are the children of a misfortune 
as real and sorrowful as ever comes to men. They 
live in a London fog and scarcely know what 
bright sunshine is. They are bereft of the cheer 
and stimulus of genuinely healthful life, and so 
are half -living, with energies .all depressed, pur- 
poses half-formed, everything in the machinery 
of mind working with deficient force. 

To some people there is nothing brings so great 
an astonishment as a suicide. They cannot com- 
prehend it, because they have never been under 
the depression of a hopeless condition. To the 
cheerful, hoping soul it is an enigma. Its only 
explanation is the sinking of hope into a settled 
despair. It intimates the use, the absolute neces- 
sity of hope to intelligent, moral beings. 

Hope is usually supposed to belong especially 
to the youthful period, but, like other original, 
mental powers, it is permanent, and wanes only 
to bring disaster. The story goes that an old lady 
upward of ninety, was asked how old one must 
be not to feel the promptings of tenderness toward 
the other sex, Her reply was, " You must ask 



THE YOUKG MAX AXD HIS HOPES. 185 

somebody older than I." So it is with hope. It 
is a faculty of the mind — a part of man having a 
perpetual office. Take out hope from the soul, 
and what is left is not man. The mind acting 
without it is not sound. The man living without 
it is not sane. The science of phrenology beyond 
all question gives the correct explanation of it, 
that it is a distinct power of the mind, having a 
srpecial office and use, without which the mind is 
incapable of normal action. Though peculiarly 
serviceable in youth and beautiful in its springing 
life, it is equally a necessity of all seasons. The 
man in the vigor of middle life has that vigor 
largely as a contribution of hope, and old age is 
made serene and cheerful by its comforting elixir. 
As people grow in years and cares thicken and 
disappointments dishearten, illusions are disj)elled 
and all stern realities come in their baldness and 
roughness, hope is more and more needed to keep 
the heart whole and the philosophy of life up to 
the accumulating necessities laid utjou it. 

Life is a ship sailing over an ocean studded with 
island ports; and it is taking on freight as it 
goes, and needs more and more the whole equip- 
ment of good navigation to carry its ever-increas- 
ing cargo into the port of its destination. Any 
failure of hope is the weakening of the whole ship 
and the disheartenment of the whole crew. Hope 
is needed, then, more and more, through the whole 



186 LOOKING FOEWAED FOE YOUNG MEN. 

journey of life. How true it is, then, 
are saved by hope," saved from disheartenment, 
from the surrender of courage, from despair and 
the disaster that follows it, from the defeat of 
powers nerveless because hopeless — saved from 
the ruin of a soul destitute of the visions of antic- 
ipated good. If children need it, how much more 
do men in the midst of life's battle and in the de- 
bilitating season of their second childhood. If it 
is the glory of the morning, how much more is it 
of the noon and evening of life, when clouds are 
more likely to gather and storms are almost sure 
to come. Surely hope is for the whole of life and 
is an important part of the outfit for the voyage. 

Important is it, therefore, that youth should 
understand that there must be no dishearten- 
ment, no sinking of courage, no weakening of 
knees, no hesitation in pushing forward for what 
is true and right and good, no compromising with 
evil because the way to good is for the present 
hedged up, no selling out of the best things for 
the poor prices of worse things. Armed with the 
courage of great hopes, the young are to go for- 
ward to realize all anticipated good so far as they 
can possibly attain it. Hope gives them the sun- 
shine in which they are to work for it. Hope 
makes their day. Whatever else they give up, 
they are not to give up hope. Whatever else they 
get, they are not to get blue. The good cheer oi 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS HOPES. 187 

perpetual hopefulness is their birthright, and they 
are to hold to it as to life itself. It has passed 
into a proverb that " while there is life there is 
hope." 

Hope is their birthright; yes, because it is born 
to them as a part of their mind, as a companion of 
their reason and their love, as the eye of the soul 
that looks onward and upward — the prophet of 
the soul that announces the coming of the better 
kingdoms. As a wheel in a watch, it has relation 
to every faculty of mind and every office* in life. 
As the eye among the senses, it overlooks every- 
thing. By legitimate right it is born to high office 
in the republic of human powers, has a part in all 
discussions and decisions, and is a part of the 
high court of finality, which directs our life. As 
well put out an eye, destroy reason, or quench 
love, as to allow hope to be dismayed and the life 
darkened by its eclipse. As well repudiate con- 
science and deny the use of imagination in our 
every-day life, as to dethrone' hope and drift in 
the dark. It is a working faculty — a contributing 
force in this marvellous thing which we call mind. 
True, we cannot take the mind to pieces and ex- 
amine its parts as we can a watch. We cannot 
measure it as we can a farm or a mill, nor com- 
pute its force as we can powder or dynamite, but 
we know it is equally real, and its separate facul- 
ties are positive powers, which work as essentially 



188 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

and harmoniously together as any piece of mech- 
anism. This mind is our birthright and each of 
its powers is our birthright; and we shape life 
and make it by our use of these powers. We 
know man's body is a piece of mechanism, and 
we know that in a large sense his mind is a piece 
of mechanism, the parts of w T hich work separately 
and in combination to purposed ends. We know 
that the swinging of a pendulum by the machinery 
that moves it is not more by law and does not 
more exhibit a contrivance to an end than do the 
actions of the separate and combined powers of 
the human mind ; and we know that hope is one 
of these powers, acting with as much force, wis- 
dom, and utility as any other. 

These faculties of the human mind and their 
combination, their law and logic, force upon us 
certain conclusions wdiich we cannot resist only 
as we lay aside our reason : 

First, that there is a contrivance in the construc- 
tion of the mind. 

Second, that the contrivance had a purpose. 

Third, that purpose had a moral character — was 
good. 

Then these conclusions force upon us a fourth, 

\ that that character, purpose, contrivance, existed 

before the human mind; and still further, that 

they existed in a personality who was the contriver 

and who cherished the purpose. Can there be 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS HOPES. 189 

anything more absolute and irresistible than this 
logic? We cannot more consistently believe in 
trees, water, rocks, than in mind, its contrivance, 
and its contriver. Nor can we more consistently 
believe in these than in moral character ; real good- 
ness in the contriver. Here is bnilded for ns the 
solid, logical foundation for our religion, which 
we can reject only by becoming illogical and false 
to the law and force of mind. 

And hope is bnilded into this foundation as one 
of the corner-stones. It is in mind ; it is in life ; it 
is in philosophy ; it is in religion, a real, positive, 
important power. What it is, how it acts, we 
cannot know. It is one of the mysteries of mind. 
Its action is spiritual. If we are staggered be- 
fore it, we must yet believe it, because it is in us 
all ; it brightens every life, stimulates to endeavor, 
quickens the pulse of health, opens desirable ca- 
reers before men, and leads them on and on. It is 
the vital urgency to labor, the quickening nerve 
of reform, the joy-giving element of life. 

Now this which is so essential and such a com- 
manding force in men is a subject of education. 
Like the intellect and the conscience, it may be in- 
structed. We may give it eyes, direction, charac- 
ter We can teach it to serve our higher interests, 
to light our way to the best things, to shine within 
us a sun of good aims and grand endeavors, and 
keep our steps moving to the music of what is di- 



190 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOU^G MEN. 

vine. We are not to let hope be a blind impulse 
leading us in false ways and setting before us the 
illusions of the senses and the infatuations of the 
passions, but to make it an educated illuminator 
of the soul in its best moods, a trained star-gazer 
whose look is always upward and whose help is to 
lead us in ascending ways. 

And it is in just this that hope is of vast inter- 
est to the young. It is a painter and fills young 
souls with pictures ; and it is for them to order 
the pictures and oversee their execution. If they 
order pictures of truth for the intellect, or of 
moral excellence for the conscience, or of base 
life for the passions, hope will prepare them and 
color them to suit the sentiment which makes the 
order. Every young soul makes choice of what it 
will hope for. What is hoped for is the inmost 
test of character. This choice of what shall be 
hoped for is the soul's choice of virtue or vice, 
right or wrong, good or evil. In this choice lie all 
the moralities of life. As a rule, men hope out of 
their desires, out of their prevailing conditions of 
mind, out of what they really are ; so, to elevate 
and educate hope they must train the mind to 
better thought and the heart to better sentiment. 
The man must be schooled in fairness, manliness, 
rightness all round. It is a great thing to so train 
a man that his hopes are all pure and manly in 
the best sense of manliness. 



THE YOUXG MAX AXD HIS HOPES. 19l 

Two conclusions are clear on this subject, which 
are, first, that we should direct ail hope to worthy 
objects — so shall the animus and aroma of those 
objects fill the mind; so shall the mind grow like 
the objects it covets; so shall hope always lead to 
what is good. The second conclusion is that we 
should hold fast to hope, stand by it, keep it vig- 
orous and commanding, and so keep off the 
" blues," keep despair at bay, make despondency 
impossible. " The blues " — how they eat the cour- 
age out of a man! Blue hours are lost hours. 
They sap the foundations of manhod ; they honey- 
comb character ; they suck the blood out of men's 
souls. A man with the blues is demoralized, is 
sick at heart. Xext to actual sin, the blues are to 
be deprecated. All that is good in a man should 
he rouse up to action to keep up a cheerful cour- 
age. 

Men of great excellence and success are always 
men of hope. This gives them spring, courage, 
working force, and holds them steadily to the 
good things they deem worthy of their pursuit, 
Hope is a larger element in success and greatness 
than most men have supposed. Its mighty ser- 
vice is in keeping body and mind at their best. 

The great man whom Americans delight to hold 
as " the father of his country," who for eminent 
worth and good fortune has had no superior, was 
a man of most hopeful disposition. He saw the 



192 LOOKING FOKWARD FOE YOTTHG MEtf. 

end from tlie beginning, and kept the vision of 
the great result constantly before him. Not for 
personal ambition, but for the good of mankind 
which he foresaw in a government by the people, 
did he take up the sword against English rule in 
the American colonies. Nothing but the uncon- 
querable hope of securing this good sustained him 
through the dark days of the Revolution. When 
strong men were despairing all around him ; when 
multitudes of the people were seemingly indiffer- 
ent to the great struggle for independence ; when 
Congress did little but find fault; when his sol- 
diers were unpaid, unclothed, and unfed, his offi- 
cers in selfish wrangles over their own prefer- 
ment, battles going against him, reinforcements of 
his enemy coming from abroad, the Tories re- 
joicing all about him and doing his cause more 
harm than his enemies in the field, and tried 
friends giving up one after another and buying 
their safety of the enemy, he still kept up hope 
and courage, and his fertility of mind and power 
to comprehend the great issue and provide for its 
necessities seemed to increase with his difficulties. 
And so he kept up year after year. When one 
of his able generals sold himself and attempted 
to sell the cause to the enemy, he said: "Whom 
can we trust? " This was the most like a momen- 
tary giving way that he was ever known to show. 
It seems to be true that the greatest of his great- 



THE YOUXG MAN AXD HIS HOPES. 193 

ness was his hope, which rose with its trials and 
helped him, above all his other powers, to be the 
extraordinary man he was. Through his whole 
life he was a resolute embodiment of a grand 
moral and religions hope. 

Another example of a hope just about as steady 
and exalted was his coadjutor and most clear- 
minded and powerful supporter, John Adams. 
Seeing always the end from the beginning, com- 
prehending perfectly the principles involved, un- 
derstanding the resources of both England and 
the colonies, and knowing .the spirit of other na- 
tions, he looked forward from his youth to the 
building up of a great empire of freedom on the 
American soil, and never for a moment, during 
the long struggle, seemed to doubt the final re- 
sult. He had confidence in the principles, the 
people, and the Providence over all, and so his 
hope was like a sun shining in his pathway, mak- 
ing it luminous with a coming success. 

Another example of a similarly powerful hope 
was Thomas Jefferson. Very different from both 
the others, neither a military man nor an orator, 
but a classical scholar, a lover of books and liter- 
ary men, a brilliant writer and a strong political 
thinker, his hope was much like that of his two 
great compatriots. He was the last of the three 
men of great hope to rise up and join in the conflict 
for country and humanity, but, like the others, 



194 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEK. 

he was a man of unconquerable hope. His whole 
life was marked with this quality, so much so 
that many have regarded him as Utopian and un- 
practical, yet it held him fast to the American 
cause and made him one of the great men of the 
world. 

But what was true of these great men in those 
great times was equally true of multitudes of un- 
known men who were led by a great moral and 
religious hope to do equally worthy deeds, and in 
their places to live equally worthy lives. 

Hope is always a leading element in all reforms 
and reformers, in all advance movements, in dis- 
coveries, inventions, improvements. It quickens 
the desire for and leads on to all best things. It 
is always dissatisfied with the present and leads 
on to something better. Mr. Edward Bellamy's 
book, entitled " Looking Backward," that is just 
now exciting such wide interest, is an inspiration 
of hope. It is really a look forward to a greatly 
improved condition of society. It kindles hope 
in its readers, and so is enjoyed as a feast of com- 
ing good. 

Hope is one of the great educators of men. It 
quickens to scholarship, to all the good attained 
through education. It founds schools and col- 
leges, makes books, evolves sciences, plants insti- 
tutions, stirs the masses of the peox^le with busi- 
ness and moral enterprises, and lifts the world out 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS HOPES. 195 

of the ruts of all antiquated tilings. It is ever on 
the alert for something new and better than we 
have had. The most of the new things are the 
children of hope. In a word, it is the great men- 
tal light that gives daytime to humanity's life — 
is the smile of God. It is an animating element 
of our religion, which always incites to better and 
better and looks to the future for the good the 
present denies, to God for what men cannot give. 
Nothing is more important for the young to 
know early than that they must hope on and hope 
ever. If they make a mistake, they must rectify 
it and go on and learn by it not to make another 
like it. If they fall, they must jump up and in 
good cheer push on. If they fail, they must not 
cry about it, but try again. A man of the last 
generation in Boston failed three times for more 
than he was worth, and yet paid all and endowed 
a college, besides enriching his heirs when he died. 
Hope is one of the never-give-up, never-tire-out 
qualities. It is never sulky nor sour; has good 
cheer for everybody ; believes in the present, but 
more in the future; is always for the best that 
now is, and pushes on for the best that is to be. 
Therefore everybody should be full of hope and 
keep so always 



196 LOOKIHG FORWARD FOR YOUKG MEK. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS HOME. 

In estimating a man, two things are to be taken 
into the account, which are the man and his loca- 
tion, or the man and his home. It is difficult to 
say which is the more important. Man a trav- 
eller, a wanderer, a vagrant, and a similar man 
located in a permanent home and tethered to it 
by all home interests are but little alike. Man a 
wanderer is aimless, listless, unaroused, uncharged 
with any great manly purpose, unstirred by the 
ambitions and energies that move the noble and 
home-loving of his kind. "The rolling stone 
gathers no moss ; " " the running hound never gets 
fat;" "the lever without a fulcrum never gets a 
purchase," are old proverbs that apply to him 
with special force. He gets no grip on anything, 
and nothing gets a grip on him. Man has to be 
located, tethered, made a part of some locality, 
before his nature begins to bud, blossom, and bear 
fruit. It seems to be made for a home, made to 
identify itself with a place, to use its power on its 
environment, in order to develop its energies and 
accomplish its best in life. He is like a tree: re- 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS HOME. 197 

move it often and its life wanes ; if it continues to 
live it does not grow. It must be permanent to 
strike down its roots and gather support from 
the soil. 

The two specially important things to a man 
are his character and his possessions. His char- 
acter is what he is in and of himself — what he has 
made himself — what he has put into himself of 
knowledge, force, worth. It may, in strictness, 
be said to be his inner possession. This he may 
carry with him wherever he goes. But even this 
must be located and known to be estimated. Trav- 
elling character is an unknown quantity. Wis- 
dom and worth pass for little among strangers. 
Character must have a home and stay there to 
be appreciated. 

The second part of a man is his possessions — 
his home and property— the things he makes his 
mark upon, is associated with— the things by 
which he surrounds himself. 

A man's home is more than the four walls of 
his house, or ought to be. The locality ought to 
be marked with him. He ought to grow into his 
surroundings, into his town and its affairs, into 
its people and their interests ; ought to grow into 
his place as Emerson did into Concord, Whittier 
into Amesbury, Adams into Quincy. How many 
neighborhoods are known by the names of the men 
who lived there long ago? The outside of a man 



198 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

is his environment — what lie looks upon, is inter- 
ested in, grows to. A real live man is a magnet ; 
lie draws things to him ; he goes out into things 
to mould them and put himself into them. In a 
sense he makes his surroundings his own; lives 
not only in his house, but in his vicinity. A man 
must both be and liave, to be a true man in this 
world of things; he must be himself and have his 
home. A man really consists of himself and his 
home. What is a king without a country, or a 
general without an army, or a farmer without a 
farm? That is what' a man is without a home. 

The biographers of George Washington trace 
back his ancestry through six centuries to a Nor- 
man family by the name of De Hertburn. De 
Hertburn exchanged his estate for the De Wys- 
sington estate, and his family took the name of 
the estate — that is, the estate rather than the man 
had the |)ermanent name. The De Hertburns, 
henceforth to be called the De Wyssingtons, were 
a vigorous stock of people, and wherever they 
planted themselves they gathered and held es- 
tates and became active forces in their communi- 
ties. In the course of time the De was dropped 
from the name, and later on the spelling was 
changed to Washington. Two of the family after 
awhile came to this country and settled in Vir- 
ginia ; and true to the family characteristics, they 
gathered great estates. Tliey were patriarchal 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS HOME. 199 

men with, large estates, families, and homes. Our 
George Washington was the richest flower and 
fruit of this ancient family tree which got its 
name from its home. It was this home-planting, 
home-staying quality in the Washingtons which 
contributed much to their power. Being strong 
magnets they gathered much in knowledge, in 
things, and in influence. The home not only gave 
them their name, but greatly increased their im- 
portance and weight in the community. And' as 
they were loyal to their homes, their homes re- 
warded them with accumulating interests. Their 
home instincts and home-accumulating industries 
contributed much to the respect in which they 
were held, as well as to their real worth. They 
are an example of the power of men's homes over 
them and of the part that the home plays in the 
good fortunes of our lives. 

There is another peculiarity about the Wash- 
ingtons, which is that through their whole his- 
tory they were loyal to their country — were pa- 
triotic and public-spirited. Their love of home 
grew into a love of the country which made the 
home possible. The home enlarged into the coun- 
try and patriotism became the instinct of home 
love. Country is possible only through the power 
of home to make it. 

Mr. Taine, in his " History of English Litera- 
ture," takes great pains to describe at length and 



200 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

in detail the peculiarities of the Anglo- Saxon 
peoples of old Scandinavia, who made up the 
English and American people. In his descrip- 
tion of them he calls them " home-stayers." He 
magnifies their toils for the home, their defence 
of home, their rough devotion to the home. 
Through many pages he particularizes their man- 
ifestation of the home element. He details their 
faithfulness to their homes, the sacredness of the 
marriage bond among them, their loyalty to their 
wives, and their generally high regard for woman 
as elements in their home sentiment. From this 
" home-staying " characteristic he gets tlie charac- 
ter-making and nation-building qualities of these 
great people. Out of the heart of this love of 
home have come these two great nations of home 
builders who are rapidly spreading themselves 
over the whole world. 

There is no doubt but the home instinct is the 
most powerful safeguard of a people. The great 
evils of society do not originate in the home. 
There are home evils, but they are not great ones 
nor general ones. Evil has its haunts in public 
places. The drinking and the gaming evils which 
lead and foster all others are essentially public 
evils. The places that teach boys bad lessons and 
fill their minds and speech with evil are on the 
street, in the public resorts, away from home and 
out of sight of home friends and protectors, Be^ 



THE YOUNG MAX .VXD HIS HOME. 201 

tween the street and the home there is always a 
moral conflict. Home is the fort for the virtues ; 
the street is the parade-ground of the vices. The 
keepers of home have to guard chiefly against the 
debasements of the street. 

There is danger that the old Anglo- Saxon love 
of home will be weakened in their descendants, 
there is so much in our day to draw men away 
from their homes. Travel, business, pleasure, the 
settlement of new regions and the growth of new 
States, the thousand agencies of intercourse, all 
take and keep men from their homes. Not a few 
have no homes save those on wheels. In this 
much-to-be-lamented absence from home there is 
dissipation, waste of time and earnings, evil ex- 
posure, and a general loosening of moral restraints, 
which in the wide fields of a nation is immensely 
disastrous. 

This subject especially appeals to young men 
in the fact that in the conflict between home and 
abroad they are liable to get the idea that the 
chief good of life is away from home. Most young 
men have to fight out this conflict with parents 
and home friends on one side, and the attractions 
and illusions of the outside world on the other. 
They see so much to allure and delight them on 
the street and in the stirring public, that home 
often gets to be a hum-drum place, simply for eat- 
ing and sleeping. Indeed, there are many young 



202 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUXG MEK. 

men wlio use home only as a place for the neces- 
sary outfit for a whirl in the public arena. The 
contrast between what they consider the stupidity 
of home and the gayety of public places is so 
sharp as to breed in their minds a dislike of 
home. This is the open way to a multitude of 
mistakes. This dislike of home and longing for 
public pleasures is a moth in the mind, a rust in 
the heart, a mildew on the moral nature, which 
works evil in many ways. If every young man 
could catch and hold the spirit of the dear old 
song, " Home, Sweet Home," it would be a perpet- 
ual blessing in his heart and on his life. 

And right here we may get a lesson from its 
author, John Howard Payne, who never had a 
home after he left his father's home. He was a 
man of talent and of many excellences, in some 
respects a genius, who had a passion for the stage 
which he would not restrain, though his father 
sought strenuously to induce him to do it. He 
became an actor ; then a writer of plays and operas, 
for which he got a poor living. In one of his 
operas he wrote his immortal song, " Home, Sweet 
Home," words and music, it is understood. His 
life was one of wandering. He travelled in many 
countries, a stage wanderer, always respectable, 
but never doing much for himself or anybody 
else, except to write " Home, Sweet Home." He 
wrote of what he had not save in memory. He 



THE YOUKG MAN AXD HIS HOME. 203 

never married; probably never tried to have a 
home. Worn out and weary at length, he died in 
Tunis, northern Africa, acting at the time as 
United States Consul, about the year 1850. Thirty 
years afterward, William W. Corcoran, an aged 
and philanthropic man of means of the city of 
Washington, who was a friend of Mr. Payne in 
his early manhood, had his mortal remains re- 
moved to Washington and buried in the country 
of his birth, in which he failed to make a home. 
His dust rests near Mount Yernon, which the 
" father of his country " has made forever mem- 
orable by a life at the other extreme, in its de- 
votion to home, from that of Mr. Payne. 

Had he devoted his excellent talents and hon- 
orable character to the true aims of a manly life, 
he might, perhaps, have made his life as useful 
and as much honored as that of the noble man 
who so tenderly gathered back his mortal dust to 
its mother country. Poor, beautiful, brilliant 
Payne! In his solitary genius, he is a sad warn- 
ing to all young men to avoid his homeless, wan- 
dering, and almost fruitless way of life. Here are 
three characters, in their sepulchres, grouped 
around the sacred heart of this country — Mount 
Vernon — two of them noble, the third piti- 
ful, all of whom illustrate the use and power of 
home to the man and the country. So important 
is the home to the man, that no man has any right 



20-4 LOOKING PORWAKD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

to expect to secure any great good to himself or 
be of any great service to the world without a 
home. 

And the home is not more important to the 
man than the country. As we cannot make men 
without homes, no more can we make countries 
without homes. A country is not composed of a 
group of men simply, but of men and their homes 
and belongings. And the homes are such signifi- 
cant factors that men are to be counted and esti- 
mated in them, and those who are without them 
are to be counted as nothing. Properly, the man 
and the home are weighed together. 

It is easy for young men to see that their hope 
of usefulness and satisfaction in life rests largely 
in the homes they shall make for themselves. 
They are to covet homes, live for homes, be a part 
of homes, and hold the home sentiments in them 
as the manliest part of them. 

Of course it is not expected that young men 
will have homes of their own with which to start 
the life of manhood. Most young men are poor 
and start life with empty hands and pockets. But 
they need not be empty-hearted or empty-headed. 
They can have homes in anticipation, homes in 
plan, homes on the brain. They can start at once 
the home-making process, which is earning and 
saving the means to make a home. They need 
not wait for the sight of somebody to occupy it . 



THE YOUXG MAX AKD HIS HOME. 205 

with them. Get the home ready and somebody 
Avill be ready to help make it cheerful. They can 
while boys learn how to make home pleasant, 
how to care for it, how to respect it, how to behave 
like men in it, how to earn money to support it, 
and how to keep wrong and evil out of it. 

Young men can learn while they are young and 
poor, as well as ever, that it is not the size of a 
home or the richness of its furnishing that makes 
it a real home. Many a blessed, beautiful, happy 
home has been made in one room. Then homes 
grow as men and trees do. The safe and sure way 
is to begin^mall and work and earn and save and 
live for that small beginning, so as to make it 
thrifty and improving. Overgrown and overdone 
homes go hard. Too much in a home makes it a 
perplexity. An over-expensive home is a trouble 
come to stay. An over-nice home is a constant 
fear and worriment. There is wisdom in keeping 
the home for its real utilities, remembering always 
that its prime utility is to be the temple of peace 
and helpfulness. At once young men can get 
about and keep about making the qualities and 
things which are essential to genuine homes. The 
money to make the home and the character to 
bless it are the two essential things. The money 
without the character will make a feast without 
the appetite to eat it, a home without the heart 
to enjoy it. Whether humble or pretentious, 



206 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUKG MFtf. 

tliere can be no home that is a home indeed with- 
out the heart to make it cheerful, kindly, patient, 
and helpful. So the first thing to get ready is tlie 
heart to make the liome Jiappy. The beginning 
of home is in the heart, and a large part of the joy 
of home is of the heart. The heart is the great 
home-maker. " Out of the heart are the issues of 
life," so out of the heart are the elements of home. 
Make the heart the fountain of home affections, 
and the home will come and brighten under its 
sway. 



THE YOtTNG MAtf AND HIS RELIGION. 207 



CHAPTER XVL 

THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS RELIGION. 

Among the many tilings that should enter into 
the young man's life to make it complete, consid- 
ered in these chapters, the most important is left 
for the last. Beyond all question, whether con- 
sidered philosophically, morally, spiritually, or 
practically, the matter of religion is not to be re- 
garded as second to any other. 

Whether the young man is aiming at practical 
success, intellectual attainments, moral excellence, 
or all combined — which is far better — he cannot, 
without irreparable loss to himself, neglect the 
lessons of religion. Religion in its most definite 
sense, as recognition of and worship of the Divine 
Being, is narrow; but in its broad and practical 
sense, as covering all lines of duty and embracing 
the ethics of all our relations, it is wide and en- 
during as life itself. It is in this latter sense that 
it is here considered. 

It is common with many to think of religion as 
relating chiefly to another life beyond the material 
things with which we are intimately concerned in 



208 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

tlie present life, but here it is considered as pri- 
marily and chiefly relating to the inmost and real 
things of the human soul in the life that now is, 
not less than that which is to come. . It relates to 
the whole of our being here and hereafter, mate- 
rial and spiritual. It rightly takes the oversight 
of all our affairs, enters into and shapes opinion, 
conduct, character, affection, even business. It 
holds the place of the power chief in command, so 
that its office is to rule, mould, give shape and 
quality to the whole of life. It is the regulator, 
the controlling power and informing spirit. Un- 
der this view, a life with religion left out is a 
vessel without a rudder, is a business without a 
manager, is a school without a teacher, is a com- 
munity without a government. Not a few 7 young 
men, misapprehending the real meaning and use 
of religion, are proposing to do without it and let 
life take its chances among the breakers of this 
world, at any rate, till they are about ready to 
leave it, as though its office was to furnish a safe 
w T ay out of the world instead of a safe way in and 
through the world. Instead of needing religion 
chiefly as an aid out of the w T orld, it is far better 
for us to understand that we need it chiefly as an 
aid in the world. Of course its light is needed in 
the departing hour, but quite as much in all the 
hours of life. The dying hour is not the supreme 
hour of life j the supreme is rather the hour of 



THE YOUXG MA3 AXD HIS RELIGlOHf. #09 

duty, the hour of opportunity, the hour of choice 
between right and wrong, the hour of self-denial, 
of fellow-service, the hour of acceptance of truth, 
the hand of help from above, the faith in divine 
principles. Every hour in life is important, and 
not one should be without the aid of religion to 
guard it from evil, to lead it in the ways of wis- 
dom, and inform and animate it with all righteous 
principles. If any one hour is the supreme hour, 
it is the hour that gives religion the helm and 
makes its principles all-commanding. 

If, then, religion is for life, to befriend it in its 
needs, to guard it in its dangers, to charge it with 
righteousness, to link it with humanity and ally 
it with God, the earlier it enters upon its work 
the better. Good things are not to be put off. 
We all admit that education is a good thing, in- 
dispensable to the best life. Shall it be put off till 
late in life? Xo is the universal answer. It is 
needed all through life, and the sooner the young 
mind is trained to its ennobling lessons the better. 
Educate early is the true doctrine. So give the 
young mind early to the rule of religion that its 
restraints and helps may aid it in all life's needs. 
Religionize the mind early is the true doctrine. 
To neglect it is to starve it, is to abuse it, is to 
leave it in the ignorance of natural childishness, 
is to leave it without the great enlightenment 
which most of all things can benefit it. What- 



2i0 LOOKING FORWARD POR YOUKG MEN". 

ever else the young man may put off, may neglect, 
may consider of least importance, this should not 
be set aside. Considered in all the higher aspects 
of life, it is of supreme importance. No matter 
what place in life one is to occupy, whether he is 
to be rich or poor, in a conspicuous or humble 
position, educated or not, he has equal need of re- 
ligion to order well and bless his life. No p]ace 
is complete without it, no man is a full man with- 
out it. 

Some suppose that because there are many dif- 
fering opinions of religion, it is difficult to deter- 
mine concerning it, and so give it no heed and go 
on in life without it. There are different opin- 
ions about food, but shall we go without food on 
this account? There are discussions about dress, 
but shall we neglect our wardrobe on this account? 
Doctors disagree about medicine, but shall we do 
nothing for ourselves when sick on this account? 
There are wide differences of opinion on politics, 
but shall this keep us from having any politics? 
Opinions differ about all our great interests, but 
this does not justify us in neglecting any. Opin- 
ion is not religion, any more than it is food, dress, 
or medicine. Opinion is an intellectual view of 
a matter. The matter itself exists independent 
of the opinions. An opinion about electricity is 
one thing; electricity is quite another thing. An 
opinion about the human soul is one thing; the 



THE YOUKG MAtf AHD HIS EELIGIOK. 2ll 

soul itself is quite another tiling. An opinion 
about God is what most men hold, but God is 
another thing. Philosophers have their opinions 
about love, but love is so apart from them all 
that men go on loving with little reference to these 
opinions. Opinion is solely of the intellect; relig- 
ion is of another faculty of the mind. Shall this 
religious faculty be put to sleep and kept forever 
from activity because men have different intellec- 
tual oxDinions about its productions? It is as cer- 
tain that men have a religious faculty as that they 
have a faculty for reason. Shall one be used and 
the other lie fallow ground in the soul? 

Men have a faculty for mathematics, but think- 
ers differ much about many things in mathemat- 
ics : shall we people of common sense throw math- 
ematics to the dogs because of these diverse 
opinions? Shall any refuse to use the mathemat- 
ical faculty in common life because some men 
differ about questions that relate to it? No more 
should any refuse to use the religious faculty in 
common life and in the common education of the 
soul, because of differences of religious opinion. 
The undeveloped intellect makes a fool ; any un- 
developed faculty makes foolishness so far as that 
faculty is concerned. Torpidity in any faculty 
disarranges the balance of faculty activity, and 
therefore the soundness and harmony of the mind. 
Torpidity in any faculty is weakness in the whole 



212 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUJTG MEN. 

mind and corresponding imperfection in the life. 
The natural and sonnd life of the mind is the 
equal activity of all the faculties. No principle 
in mental science is better established. There- 
fore the inefficiency of the religious faculty gives 
inefficiency to the whole mind and a correspond- 
ing inefficiency to the life. 

But the religious faculty is not only a faculty 
in the mind, but a central faculty in a group of 
faculties, all of which are allied to it in function 
and product, and which is the crowning group of 
the whole mind. Around the central religious 
faculty are the faculties of benevolence, conscien- 
tiousness, spirituality, ideality, and hope, all al- 
lied with it in the ideal excellencies they produce 
in the mind and the visions of pure and harmoni- 
ous life they would open to us all. This religious 
group of mind qualities is the source of all relig- 
ions and all religiousness, all the moralities, all 
the visions of ideal excellence, which have enriched 
the literatures and the lives of men. The upper 
side of human life, the best things known to men, 
the poetry and praise and prayer and love and 
nobility of all the ages, have been the product of 
this religious group of mind powers. This has 
produced the men great in goodness, the soul- 
giants who in unselfish lives have set the greatest 
and the best things before men — the teachers in 
what is pure, high, and helpful — the saints who 



THE YOUNG MAN AND HIS RELIGION. 213 

have lived on the borderland of celestial realities 
and yet who have loved their kind with a great 
uplifting affection. And this, too, has produced 
the common good found everywhere among men, 
the kith and kinship of soul which everywhere 
binds men together and gives them visions of 
something better in the higher reaches of life, 
which they anticipate in the mysterious yet fruit- 
ful hereafter. Out of this group of faculties has 
flowed a perpetual river of life among men which 
has made human society desirable and kept always 
hoisted above it an archway of heavenly light and 
hopes. Through this group, too, have come the 
communions with the heavens which have quick- 
ened unspeakable hopes and held men's gaze ever 
upward for more and better. 

This group of religious and moral faculties are 
such an important part of the mind that to 
neglect them is fearful self -abuse, is crippling 
manhood in its best parts, is deforming the char- 
acter where deformity is most hideous to men of 
sound minds. Just for fair self-treatment, for 
harmony of character, for roundness, complete- 
ness, every young man should order his life by 
the great xorecepts of religion which have gained 
the approval of all the best ages since the Great 
Teacher of Galilee announced them to the w T orld. 
And he should begin this ordering early and do it 
in the deepest conviction of the solemn realities 



214 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUiTG MEK. 

of the life that now is and of that which is to 
come. Oar human life beyond all question is di- 
vine in origin and oversight, and is amenable to 
the government under which it exists, so that the 
most urgent responsibility rests upon us to make 
the most and best of it. We have no right to 
cripple any part of it by neglect or abuse. We 
owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our fellow-men, 
we owe it to our Maker, to be complete men, rev- 
erent to God, helpful to our fellows, just to our- 
selves. By what right can we live profane lives? 
By what right can we set examples of folly, self- 
ishness, and sin before men? By what right can 
we grow up to manhood trampling on the best 
things, herding with vileness, and affiliating with 
profaneness? By what authority do we befoul 
our souls with brutality and give our young life 
to sin and shame? Who authorizes us to so live 
as to please the irreligious? We must please 
somebody in our lives: who shall it be, the godless 
or the devout? 

Surely man is more than an animal. An ani- 
mal lives for self -gratification, but man must live 
for something more and better if he would prove 
himself something more and better than an ani- 
mal. Religion sets before him the better life 
which denies self, restrains the animal nature, and 
puts its forces to the service of virtue. Religion 
opens a great life of well-doing, of genuine manii- 



THE YOUNG MAX AXD HIS RELIGION. 215 

ness, of soul-development in divine things which. 
allies men with the angels, and men and angels 
with God, and men and angels and God in a king- 
dom of everlasting light and love. 

Nothing is manlier than true religion ; nothing 
is greater, nobler, happier. And no life is com- 
inete or anywhere near its best without it; ay, 
no life is manly without it. 

Of course, in all that is here said of religion, 
that taught and exemplified by Jesus the Christ 
is had in mind. In comparison with it no other 
can worthily bear the name, though all religions 
attest the worthiness of human nature, its con- 
sciousness of frailty,- its need of help, its craving 
for something better than it can of itself attain. 
The order of life which Christ's religion sets be- 
fore men as possible to them, the law of love which 
it elucidates as the supreme law, the unselfish 
morality which it enforces, the divine immanence 
and superintendence of wisdom and love in law 
which it proclaims and the triumphing purpose 
of the divine goodness in all souls in the immor- 
tality of its rule which it teaches, are so charged 
with all that we can think of as heavenly, that we 
are left to the necessity of holding this as the per- 
fect and ultimate religion. Of its many interpre- 
tations, each one must, of course, be his own judge. 
But considering how different and in many doc- 
trines how opposite are many of these interpreta- 



216 LOOKING FORWARD FOE YOUNG MEN. 

tions, it is wonderful how in them all, at heart, is 
one spirit, one all-prevailing love that wins to 
righteousness and peace. Or perhaps it may be 
more proper to say that at the bottom of all in- 
terpretations are three prevailing loves, for right- 
eousness, for humanity, and for Grocl, and the 
combination of these constitutes its spirit. To 
hold this religion under any of its interpretations 
is to have a supreme authority, a law of duty and 
a life of love perpetually over and in one to give 
dignity, order, and high purpose to living. 

Now, to live without this religion is a species of 
perpetual self -robbery. It is tethering one's self to 
the earth. This religion gives an ideal of a true 
life without which no one should attempt to live. 
It furnishes a wisdom which every one constantly 
needs. It furnishes the most wholesome restraints, 
and the most ennobling incentives to uprightness 
in all our relations. 

And what is more, nothing has been found as"a 
substitute for it. No philosophy, no science, no 
law, no learning, no combination of human inven- 
tions, will serve in its stead as a sure director of 
human energies to their highest uses. It is a light 
from above, a leaven put into humanity from the 
Divine, adapted to our nature and needs, and so 
adapted as to serve us in all our experiences, in 
joy and sorrow, in health and sickness, at home 
and abroad, in plenty and want, in prosperity and 



THE TOUXG MAX AXD HIS KELIGIOX. 217 

adversity, in business and pleasure, in temporal 
and spiritual affairs. 

In the fifteen preceding chapters of this book, 
life has been looked at in a great variety of rela- 
tions, but not one of them but needs the aid of 
religion to make it what it should be. 

It is a mistake to suppose that religion is only 
for emergencies, for the stresses and trials of life, 
for the dark, hard places; it is equally for all 
places. It is a knv, a righteousness, an ordered 
spirit for the whole of life, and for life in the 
world beyond the present, not less than for this. 
It has all life and all worlds for its own. It looks 
on beyond death into the eternal ages. Indeed, it 
is above death and is the law of eternal life. It 
is put in the New Testament as " the eternal life " 
— the everlasting good of being. 

No young man should forget for a moment that 
religion, as well as all other good things in this 
world, is soon to become the sole possession of 
those who are now young. What will they do 
with it? What for it? How is it to fare in their 
hands? What are to be its works and triumphs 
under their direction? Whom will it reach with 
its blessings under their administration? They 
are to be its preachers, administrators, supporters, 
believers, and exemplars. Who is getting ready 
for the work it will have need to have done in its 
behalf? Who are seriously weighing their obli- 



218 LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUNG MEN. 

gations to it? Its literature must be written, its 
churches and schools conducted, its laws enacted 
and enforced, its society cared for. Who will do it ? 
Those now engaged in these high affairs will soon 
be gone. All the great affairs of church, as well 
as state and home and society, will soon be in hands 
which are now young. Is there not need of seri- 
ous counsel wdth the young about what they are 
to do and how do it? We who are older cannot 
be too anxious for the young. Sermons, lectures, 
books for the young are always in time, for the 
affairs of life are slipping fast from older to 
younger hands, Great preparation is needed for 
great duties, much counsel about important affairs. 
The young have no choice about whether they 
will grow old or not. The years come without 
their bidding. Responsibilities hurry to weight 
them down. They surely need all the helps of their 
seniors, all the aids of religion, to make them 
equal to the duties they cannot shirk. Let them 
reverently accept the inevitable and religiously 
prepare to bear the ark of all good through 
the wilderness of this world to the Canaan 
visioned in the " hope that entereth into that with- 
in the veil," 



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Men and Women Differ in Character. 




[Portraits from Life in " Heads and Faces."] 



do. 1. 
Ho. 2. 
fco. 3. 
No. 4. 



James Parton. 
A. M. Rice. 
Wm.M. Evarts. 
General Wisewell, 



No. 5. Emperor Paul of Russia. No. 9. 

No. 6. George Eliot, No. 10. 

No. 7. King Frederick the Strong. No. 1L 

No. 8. Prof. George Bush. 



General Napier. 
Otho the Great 
African. 



IF YOU WANT SOMETHING 

that will interest you more than anything- you have ever read and enable 
you to understand all the differences in people at a glance, by the " Signs 
of Character," send for a copy of 

HEADS A1TD FACES; How to Study Them. 

A new Manual of Character Beading for the people, by Prof. Nelson 
Sizer, the Examiner in the phrenological office of Fowler & Wells Co., 
New York, and H. S. Drayton, M.D., Editor of the Phrenological 
Journal. The authors know what they are writing about, Prof. Sizer 
having devoted nearly fifty years almost exclusively to the reading of 
character and he here la3 T s down the rules employed by him in his pro- 
fessional work. It will show you how to read people as you would a 
book, and to see if they are inclined to be g'ood, upright, honest, true, kind, 
charitable, loving, Joyous, happy and trustworthy people, such as you 
would like to know. 

A knowledge of Human Nature would save many disappointments in 
social and business life. 

This is the most comprehensive and popular w T ork ever published for 
the price, 25,000 copies having been sold the first year. Contains 200 large 
octavo pages and 250 portraits. Send for it and study the people you see 
and your own eharacter. If you are not satisfied after examining the 
book, you may return it, in good condition, and money will be re- 
turned to you. 

We will send it carefully by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price, 40 cents, 
m oaper, or $1 in cloth binding. Agents wanted. Address 

FOILER & IELLS CO., Publishers, 775 Broadway, New York. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS • 



022 009 202 1 



